Rhett Butler's People
Page 36
Tazewell Watling sat listening to the faint clip-clop of horses on Royal Street. His moon rose over his lime trees.
The next morning, Tazewell Watling wrote, “Dear Maman, I hope you will consent to visit me in New Orleans. I have a grand surprise for you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
A Silly Joke
One brisk Atlanta morning, outside the Farmer’s and Merchants’ Bank, Rhett passed an elderly couple selling apples from a farm wagon. The man called in a singsong, “Keepers, I got keepers. I got ciders, dessert apples’ll melt in your mouth. I got your pie apples and cobblers. I got yellows and reds and stripes! Apples, I got your apples!”
The man’s Confederate coat had been neatly patched; his wife’s coat had been sewn from a blanket. It was impossible to guess their age. Her teeth were gone and his few were tobacco-stained. His hat, which might have once been a soldier’s, was a color somewhere between brown and green. She knelt in the back of the wagon, sorting apples from one cask to another, setting each gently to avoid bruising them.
“Here, mister,” the man cried. “Can you afford a penny for an apple? Take some home to the wife and young’uns.”
The woman looked at Rhett through clear blue eyes and said, “Jimmy, maybe the gentleman don’t got nary wife nor young’uns. Maybe he got nobody to take an apple to.”
The man’s face fell. “Nobody to take an apple to? Mercy! What a world we’re a-livin’ in, Sarie June. What a world!”
Laughing, Rhett bought a peck of Esopus Spitzenbergs because he liked the name.
As she slipped apples into a sack, the woman asked Rhett if he had children.
“Three.”
“How are they called?”
“Wade Hampton will be nine next month, Ella—let’s see—she’s four, and my Bonnie Blue is a year and eight months and four days.”
“She’s yer favrit? You lit up when you thought on her.”
“She is my own. She is beautiful.”
“Sure she is.” The woman reached into a smaller cask for three large yellow apples. “These Smokehouses are too sweet for grown-ups. But young’uns can’t get enough of them.” As she wrapped each separately in newspaper, she said, “This ’un is for Wade Hampton, this is for Ella, and I reckon this big one will suit your little Miss Bonnie Blue. No, no charge for the children.”
As she tied his sack with the children’s apples on top, Rhett asked, “How long are you married?”
“How long’s it been, Sarie June?” The man grinned. “Nigh on to forever.”
He danced away from her swat.
The old man continued, “I reckon I can’t remember a time when we wasn’t married. Oh, it’s been a sorrowful time. This woman has been a tribulation.”
This time, her swat connected and they laughed merrily at his wit and her vigorous response.
When he stopped chuckling, he added, “My Sarie could have had anyone she wanted. Oh, the boys were clusterin’ around her like bees at a cider press. But Sarie chanced on me. Lovin’s a chancy thing. You chance it every day.”
Rhett tied the sack behind the saddle, mounted his horse, and cantered down Mitchell Street. He and Scarlett lived in a showplace on Peachtree Street. They spent more for supper at the Kimball House than the old couple made in a week. Atlanta’s important men, Governor Bullock himself, called on them.
But Rhett and Scarlett had never shared a silly joke. Never.
She had never said she loved him. Knowing what her answer would be, he never asked.
Sometimes, Rhett felt like a man falling from a precipice, powerless to direct his fall or undo the disaster. Although he and Scarlett hadn’t been married three years, like the apple seller, Rhett couldn’t remember a time when they weren’t married. His and Scarlett’s quarrels were more real than his memories of other women’s embraces.
He loved her and couldn’t leave her. Rhett’s wife thought she loved Ashley Wilkes. Rhett bought her what she asked for. Her carriage was trimmed in cherry veneer. If she fancied a gown or a trinket, it was hers.
Sometimes he despised himself. Did he think he could buy her? Maybe after Scarlett was happy, after she finally owned everything she ever wanted, maybe then she would open her heart.
She loved her sawmills because she was a shrewd businesswoman. She loved her sawmills because she could be with her manager, Ashley Wilkes. She was at the mill with Ashley today. When she came home, she’d have that faraway look in her eyes.
Sometimes, Rhett regretted not letting the Yankees hang the man.
The Butler home was dark and opulent, with carved wood paneling, heavy furniture, and floor-to-ceiling drapes. The gaslights were on.
He gave the sack to Mammy, explaining that the children were to have the wrapped apples when Bonnie rose from her nap.
“Mr. Rhett, these Smokehouses—childrens gonna love ’em.” Mammy confided, “They so sweet, they make my teeth ache.”
He bounded up the stairs and turned into the nursery. He put his finger to his lips so the other children wouldn’t wake Bonnie. Gently, he tugged her coverlet to her chin. Her eyelashes were gossamer, the tenderest things in the world. For some damn reason, a tear moistened his eye. Wade was tugging his sleeve as Ella silently urged him to sit down. When he did, she curled up on his lap. Why did children smell different from grown-ups?
Wade was showing him something—a dark gray stone that turned wonderfully red when he licked it.
When she came in, Scarlett took everything in at a glance. She had that look in her eyes. “I want to talk to you.” She marched into their bedroom. Silently, Wade put his marvelous stone back into his pocket. As he dislodged Ella, Rhett ruffled her hair.
He closed her bedroom door behind him. “Rhett, I’ve decided that I don’t want any more children. I think three are enough.”
Lord, she was beautiful. Beautiful and blind. If Ashley Wilkes would have her, if she ever got her dream, she wouldn’t want it. Only the unattainable would satisfy her.
“Three seems an adequate number,” he said.
She flushed. “You know what I mean. …”
Damn her for a fool! They could have been happy. No, something more than happy. Something …
“I shall lock my door every night.”
“Why bother? If I wanted you, no lock would keep me out.”
He left her then and returned to the nursery, where Wade and Ella greeted him with smiles. Smiles.
In a bit, his darling Bonnie would wake and they would all go down to the kitchen and eat apples and perhaps enjoy a silly joke.
CHAPTER HTIRTY-EIGHT
A White Robe
Rosemary Haynes Ravanel stood trembling on her front steps. Angry fingers tucked the butcher paper parcel, as if rewrapping could make things right. Excepting the tic at the corner of her mouth, Rosemary’s face was impassive. Someone might be watching. Someone might have seen her open the parcel. That gentleman strolling down the sidewalk tipped his hat. That horseman rode past without a glance. That curtain on the second-story window across the street—did it flutter? Damn them! Oh damn them all to hell!
The parcel she carried into her home—into her home—contained three yards of cheap white cotton fabric, a red ribbon for the breast cross, and a crudely printed note: “Dear Missy, please make this into a robe and mask for the Ku Klux. Make it big!”
It was Christmas day. The holly Rosemary had strung in the hall was cheerful green and red. The juniper wreath on the drawing room door had a wonderful clean smell.
Inside her home!
Rosemary flung the parcel down. “How dare they!” she whispered. Her breath came as fast as a trapped sparrow’s. How dare they!
When had Southern Honor died? At Pickett’s Charge, at Franklin? Had all the honorable men died?
Rosemary thought she might be sick.
Southern Honor had come to this: a ruffian thinking to impress his comrades because his KKK robe, his murderer’s garb, had been sewn by his commander’s wife.
“I know nothing of murders, whippings, and beatings of negroes and white Republicans. You say negro women are raped? I know nothing of negro families hiding in the woods, or their shacks burned to the ground, of men and, yes, women dragged out of their homes, never to be seen again. My husband? Andrew is often away. He is sometimes absent for weeks. But surely it is not a wife’s place to question her husband’s whereabouts. You say my husband is prominent in the Ku Klux Klan? Andrew has never spoken to me about any Ku Klux Klan.” Charleston newspapers reported on the alleged Ku Klux Klan and eluded Republicans for exaggerating its influence.
William Champion was paid a visit the other night by Certain Citizens who apparently objected to his inciting Negroes to Rebellion. Mr. Champion will be seen no more in the Carolinas.
The body on the station platform was identified as that of Senator Arthur DeBose, the Radical Negro Legislator. Although passengers were waiting for the noon train, no one was able to identify DeBose’s assailants, who rode away unhindered.
When Andrew was in the Low Country, he usually stayed at Congress Haynes’s old fishing camp. Sometimes, Rosemary only learned he’d been there after he’d gone again.
Occasionally, very early, she’d be startled awake by Andrew’s footsteps passing her bedroom door.
Andrew was so gaunt, he seemed to have grown taller. His wrists were taut as braided rope. When Rosemary spoke to her husband, he flinched, as if surprised at her temerity. He answered her anxious questions about Haynes & Son as if that firm were owned by strangers.
One November morning, when Rosemary came downstairs, she’d found her husband’s riding boots beside the bootjack, where he’d left them last night. The uppers were flecked with dark blood, the toes crusted with clotted gore. At arm’s length, Rosemary had carried them upstairs and set them outside her husband’s bedroom door.
Most of what Rosemary knew about her husband’s activities, she learned at the Charleston market.
“I understand your husband has been in York County, Mrs. Ravanel. Please tell the Colonel every decent white woman thanks him!”
“Mrs. Ravanel, my up-country cousin is deathly afraid the niggers are going to murder her in her bed. Mrs. Joseph Randolph of Centreville. Please mention Mrs. Randolph to your husband.”
“I saw your husband with Archie Flytte and Josie Watling on the River Road yesterday. I declare they had a stern look about them.”
Negro fish and produce mongers Rosemary had known all her life wouldn’t meet her eye.
When Andrew tried again to recruit Jamie Fisher, Jamie had replied to his former Colonel, “I have followed you to the gates of hell, but I will not follow you into the Klan.”
Andrew had accused Jamie of being a moneygrubbing innkeeper.
“Really, Rosemary,” Jamie told her later, “I couldn’t think what to say. So, I tried to make a joke. I told Andrew the only men who could wear dresses without blushing were Scotsmen and priests. I thought Andrew was going to knock me down.”
Now, Rosemary went to the kitchen to boil water for oatmeal. When it was ready, she set it on a silver tray to carry upstairs. Her son Louis Valentine’s little bed was in his grandmother’s bedroom. Sometimes, Elizabeth Butler cared for the boy, sometimes the boy cared for his Nana; they were playmates.
The child’s sweet temper was hitched to a precocious adult knowingness. He’d sit and listen to Nana’s Jesus stories all day, but when she turned to the harsh Old Testament prophets, Louis Valentine’s little face would darken. He said, “I hate it when God is mean!”
In the bleak aftermath of the War, when Rosemary and Andrew married, Andrew Ravanel had wanted a son, and their lovemaking had been urgent, if not tender. After Louis Valentine was born, Andrew lost interest, as if a live birth were everything he required.
Andrew never asked after Louis Valentine. He seemed to have forgotten he had a son.
As Rosemary set the tray down, Elizabeth Butler was tasking her grandson to name the wise men.
“Melchior,” Valentine said confidently. “Bal…” He shook his head, disgusted with his failure.
“Balthazar?” Elizabeth prompted.
“Yes, Nana. And Caspar, too!” Valentine ran to kiss his mother. “Good morning, Mama. Mama? Mama, are you sad?”
“It’s all right, dear. Mama’s sad this morning. Not sad about you. I couldn’t be sad about you!”
Elizabeth said, “The wise men came from the East!” She confided, “Isaiah Watling believes they were Chinamen!”
Louis Valentine considered this theory gravely. “Chinamen are on the bottom of the world?”
“Yes, dear.”
“Why don’t they fall off?”
“Because God loves them, dear. God loves all His children.”
Rosemary set two places at the table and bowed her head while Louis Valentine said grace. She took their chamber pot downstairs to the necessary, emptied and washed it.
Afterward, she carried her own tepid, half-solidified oatmeal into the family room, where, in the silver chest, she kept Melanie Wilkes’s precious letters. Without those letters, Rosemary thought she would go mad.
Dearest Rosemary,
Please forgive my bleak indiscretions. I hope you understand that I confide to you what I cannot confide to another. If I didn’t have you to unburden myself to, I don’t know what I would do. Should I set dissembling aside and shout the truth?
My beloved husband, Ashley, has always been attracted to my dearest friend Scarlett. I had hoped that your brother would cure Scarlett of this infatuation, but she—the friend I love more than any on earth—yearns after my husband so openly, sometimes I must needs look away. Sometimes, when Scarlett is wearing that particular dreamy expression, I ask, “Dear Scarlett, what are you thinking?” She’ll answer that she’s thinking about the garden, the children, politics, or some other matter that never crosses her unhorticultural, unmotherly, unpolitical mind. I pretend to believe her because, dear Rosemary, I must pretend.
We are, all of us, imprisoned by Love.
When I was a girl, I thought Love attended one like a floral perfume. Now I think Love is more like a drunkard’s craving for wine. The drunkard knows his desire destroys everything precious to him. He knows he will despise himself tomorrow, and yet he cannot forswear wine!
Dear Rosemary, Scarlett thinks it is merely ill fortune she and my husband are so rarely alone. I confess my design: I would as soon leave those two together as a drunkard with a case of brandy!
Whenever Scarlett visits Ashley’s mill, that evening my husband comes home to me a different man. Even as he kisses me glad hello, poor Ashley’s troubled eyes shout that he’d rather be with another.
Your brother is trying to persuade Scarlett to sell her sawmills to Ashley, so they’ll have no excuse to be together!
I dare not conceive again. Dr. Meade has uttered the direst warnings. Consequently, Ashley and I cannot enjoy those intimate relations which bond a husband and wife. I miss Ashley so!
Since Rhett and Scarlett’s happiness is so interwoven with my own, I wish I could write that their marriage was happy. Rhett is not unfaithful, nor is Scarlett, but they are as discontented as two philanderers. When differences arise, they are not resolved; misunderstandings are taken to heart; each one’s privacies make no space for the other; and last month, Mammy, Scarlett’s dear old nurse, confided (in her usual oblique fashion) that they no longer share a bed.
Scarlett has so identified herself with Atlanta’s Carpetbaggers that respectable people snub her on the street. As if to goad Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing, Scarlett routinely entertains Governor Bullock and his cronies—Puryear, Kimball, and Blodge
tt. Rhett avoids these gatherings like the plague.
Oh Rosemary, Rhett and Scarlett are so dear to my heart! If your brother hadn’t been driving that dreadful night we fled Atlanta… and afterward, when hard times stalked the land, if Scarlett had not been Mistress at Tara, I don’t believe my son, Beau, or myself would have survived.
Scarlett and Rhett are not like you and me. Heads turn when they walk into a room. They expect duller folks’ deference.
When the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon’s court, she brought a powerful retinue: soldiers, viziers, and serving maids. Her horses were caparisoned with gold and precious rubies. At Jerusalem’s gates, Solomon’s guards stood aside to let them pass.
The Queen had come to Solomon to ask questions she had considered all her life, questions her most learned advisers could not answer.
I don’t imagine she went to him that first day, nor even the second. Minor officials would scurry back and forth; perhaps there was a welcome feast, with Solomon at the head of an enormous table and Sheba at the foot.
But soon, for she was a mighty Queen, she would have had her audience. Solomon was robed as richly as she. He was handsome. He had a hundred concubines, many of them younger and lovelier than she.
When Sheba asked him a question, Solomon answered it. When she asked another, he answered that, too. He answered all her questions.
The Bible says, “The spirit went out of her.” What use was her power and wealth when he could answer any question she put to him?
How she must have hated him.
Rhett and Scarlett’s link, the only thing they agree on, is their daughter, Bonnie, whom they love to distraction. I’m afraid Rhett spoils Bonnie. He takes her with him everywhere. She’s such a charming creature!
Little Bonnie has accomplished a miracle. She has made Rhett Butler—promise you won’t laugh—respectable!
When Rhett learned the Butler children weren’t being invited to children’s parties because society disapproved of their parents, he mended fences. When he has a mind to, your brother can charm the pelt off a grizzly bear!