Eleanor Butler’s apprehensions were unnecessary. Sally Brewton had been explicit. “The girl is almost totally lacking in education, and she has the taste of a Hottentot. But she has vigor and strength, and she’s a survivor. We need her kind in the South, yes, even in Charleston. Perhaps especially in Charleston. I’m sponsoring her; I expect all my friends to make her feel welcome here.”
Soon Scarlett’s days were a whirlwind of activity. Beginning with an hour or more at the Market, then a big breakfast at the house—usually including Brewton’s sausage—she was out and about by ten o’clock, freshly dressed, with Pansy trotting behind carrying her card case and personal supply of sugar, an expected accompaniment to all guests in rationing times. There was enough time to pay as many as five calls before she returned for dinner. Afternoons were taken up by visits to ladies having their “at home” days or whist parties or excursions with new friends to King Street for shopping or receiving callers with Miss Eleanor.
Scarlett loved the constant activity. Even more, she loved the attention paid her. Most of all, she loved hearing Rhett’s name on everyone’s lips. A few old women were openly critical. They had disapproved of him when he was young, and they would never relent. But most of them forgave his earlier sins. He was older now, chastened. And he was devoted to his mother. Old ladies who had lost their own sons and grandsons in the War could well understand Eleanor Butler’s glowing happiness.
The younger women regarded Scarlett with poorly concealed envy. They delighted in telling all the facts, and all the rumors, about what Rhett was doing when he left the city without explanation. Some said that their husbands knew for sure that Rhett was financing the political movement to throw out the carpetbagger government In the state capital. Others whispered that he was recapturing the Butler family portraits and furnishings at the point of a gun. All of them had stories about his exploits during the War, when his sleek dark ship raced through the Union blockade fleet like a death-dealing shadow. They had a special look on their faces when they talked about him, a mixture of curiosity and romantic imaginings. Rhett was more myth than man. And he was Scarlett’s husband. How could they not envy her?
Scarlett was at her best when she was constantly busy, and these were good days for her. The social rounds were just what she needed after the terrifying loneliness of Atlanta, and she quickly forgot the desperation she had felt. Atlanta must have been wrong, that’s all. She’d done nothing to deserve such cruelty or everybody in Charleston wouldn’t like her so much. And they did, why else would they invite her?
The thought was immensely gratifying. She returned to it often. Whenever she was paying her calls, or receiving calls with Mrs. Butler, or visiting her specially chosen friend, Anne Hampton, at the Confederate Home, or gossiping over coffee at the Market, Scarlett always wished that Rhett could see her. Sometimes she even looked quickly around her, imagining that he was there, so intense was her desire. Oh, if only he’d come home!
He seemed closest to her in the quiet time after supper when she sat with his mother in the study and listened with fascination while Miss Eleanor talked. She was always willing to remember things Rhett had done or said when he was a little boy.
Scarlett enjoyed Miss Eleanor’s other stories, too. Sometimes they were wickedly funny. Eleanor Butler, like most of her Charleston contemporaries, had been educated by governesses and travel. She was well-read but not intellectual, spoke the romance languages adequately, but with a terrible accent, was familiar with London, Paris, Rome, Florence, but only the famous historic attractions and luxury shops. She was true to her era and her class. She had never questioned the authority of her parents or her husband, and she did her duty in all respects, without complaining.
What set her apart from most women of her type was that she had an irrepressible, quiet sense of fun. She enjoyed whatever life brought her and found the human condition fundamentally entertaining, and she was a gifted teller of stories, with a repertoire that ranged from accounts of amusing incidents in her own life to the classic Southern storehouse of the skeletons in the closets of every family in the region.
Scarlett, if she had known the reference, could accurately have called Eleanor her personal Scheherazade. She never realized that Mrs. Butler was trying, indirectly, to stretch her mind and her heart. Eleanor could see the vulnerability and courage that had drawn her beloved son to Scarlett. She could also see that something had gone horribly wrong with the marriage, so wrong that Rhett wanted nothing more to do with it. She knew, without being told, that Scarlett was desperately determined to get him back, and for her own reasons she was even more eager for reconciliation than Scarlett was. She wasn’t certain whether Scarlett could make Rhett happy, but she believed with all her heart that another child would make the marriage a success. Rhett had visited her with Bonnie; she would never forget the joy of it. She had loved the little girl and loved even more seeing her son so happy. She wanted that happiness again for him, and the joy again for herself. She was willing to do anything in her power to accomplish it.
Because she was so occupied, Scarlett had been in Charleston for more than a month before she noticed that she was bored. It happened at Sally Brewton’s, the least boring place in town, when everyone was talking about fashion, a subject that had previously been of consuming interest to Scarlett. At first she was fascinated to hear Sally and her circle of friends mention Paris. Rhett had once brought her a bonnet from Paris, the most beautiful, most exciting gift she’d ever received. Green—to match her eyes, he’d said—with glorious wide silk ribbons to tie under her chin. She made herself listen to what Alicia Savage was saying—though what a skinny old lady like her could know about dressing was hard to figure. Or Sally, either. With her face and flat chest, nothing would make her look good.
“Do you remember Worth’s fittings?” Mrs. Savage said. “I thought I’d collapse standing on the platform so long.”
A half dozen voices spoke at once, sharing complaints about the brutality of Paris dressmakers. Others argued with them, saying that any inconvenience was a small price to pay for the quality that only Paris could supply. Several sighed over memories of gloves and boots and fans and perfume.
Scarlett turned automatically toward whatever voice was speaking, an interested expression on her face. When she heard laughter, she laughed. But she thought about other things—whether there was any of that good pie left from dinner to have for supper . . . her blue dress that could use a fresh collar . . . Rhett . . . She looked at the clock behind Sally’s head. She couldn’t leave for at least eight more minutes. And Sally had seen her looking. She’d have to pay attention.
The eight minutes seemed like eight more hours.
“All anybody talked about, Miss Eleanor, was clothes. I thought I’d go crazy I was so bored!” Scarlett collapsed into the chair opposite Mrs. Butler’s. Clothes had lost their fascination for her when she was reduced to the four “serviceable” drab-colored frocks Rhett’s mother helped her order from the dressmaker. Even the ballgowns that were being made held small interest. There were only two, for the upcoming six-week series of balls almost every night. They were dull, too—dull colors, one blue silk and one claret-colored velvet—and dull design, with hardly any trim. Still, even the dullest ball meant music—and dancing—and Scarlett dearly loved to dance. Rhett would be back from the plantation, too, Miss Eleanor had promised her. If only she didn’t have to wait so long for the Season to start. Three weeks suddenly seemed unendurably boring to contemplate with nothing to do but sit around and talk to women.
Oh, how she wished something exciting would happen!
Scarlett’s wish was granted very soon, but not in the way she wanted. Instead, the excitement was terrifying.
It started as malicious gossip that had people laughing all over town. Mary Elizabeth Pitt, a spinster in her forties, claimed that she had awakened in the middle of the night and seen a man in her room. “Just as plain as anything,” she said, “with a kerchief ove
r his face like Jesse James.”
“If ever I heard wishful thinking,” someone unkindly commented, “that’s it. Mary Elizabeth must be twenty years older than Jesse James.” The newspaper had been printing a series of articles romanticizing the daring exploits of the James brothers and their gang.
But the following day the story took an ugly turn. Alicia Savage was also in her forties, but she had been married twice, and everyone knew that she was a calm-natured, rational woman. She, too, had woken up and seen a man in her bedroom, standing beside her bed, looking at her in the moonlight. He was holding the curtain back to let the light in, and he was staring over a kerchief that hid the lower part of his face. The upper part was shadowed by the bill of his cap.
He was wearing the uniform of a Union soldier.
Mrs. Savage screamed and threw a book from her bedside table at him. He went through the curtains onto the piazza before her husband reached her room.
A Yankee! Suddenly everyone was afraid. Women alone were frightened for themselves; women with husbands were frightened for themselves and even more afraid for their husbands, because if a man injured a Union soldier, he’d go to prison or even be hanged.
The next night and the next, the soldier materialized in a woman’s bedroom. On the third night, the report was the worst of all. It wasn’t moonlight that woke Theodosia Harding, it was the movement of a warm hand on the coverlet over her breasts. Only darkness met her eyes when she opened them. But she could hear strangled breathing, feel a crouching presence. She cried out, then fainted from fear. No one knew what might have happened next. Theodosia had been sent to cousins in Summerville. Everyone said she was in a state of collapse. Near idiocy, added the ghoulish.
A delegation of Charleston men went to Army headquarters with the elderly lawyer Josiah Anson as their spokesman. They were going to begin their own night patrols in the old part of the city. If they surprised the intruder, they’d deal with him themselves.
The commandant agreed to the patrols. But he warned that if any Union soldier was hurt, the responsible man or men would be executed. There’d be no vigilante justice or random attacks on Northern troops under the guise of protecting Charleston’s women.
Scarlett’s fears—long years of them—crashed on her like a tidal wave. She had grown contemptuous of the occupation troops; like everyone else in Charleston she ignored them, acted as if they were not there, and they got out of her way as she walked briskly down the sidewalk on her way to pay a call or go shopping. Now she was afraid of every blue uniform she saw. Any one of them might be the midnight intruder. She could imagine him all too well, a figure springing out from the dark.
Her sleep was broken by hideous dreams—memories, really. Again and again she saw the Yankee straggler who’d come to Tara, smelled the rank smell of him, saw his filthy, hairy hands pawing through the trinkets in her mother’s work box, his red-rimmed eyes hot with violent lust staring at her and his broken-toothed mouth wet and twisted in an anticipatory leer. She’d shot him. Obliterated the mouth and the eyes in an explosion of blood and bits of bone and viscous red-streaked gobbets of his brains.
She’d never been able to forget the echoing boom of the shot and the ghastly red spatterings and her fierce, rending triumph.
Oh, if only she had a pistol to protect herself and Miss Eleanor from the Yankee!
But there was no weapon in the house. She ransacked cupboards and trunks, wardrobes and dresser drawers, even the shelves behind the books in the library. She was defenseless, helpless. For the first time in her life she felt weak, unable to face and overcome any obstacle in her way. It all but crippled her. She begged Eleanor Butler to send a message to Rhett.
Eleanor temporized. Yes, yes, she’d send word. Yes, she’d tell him what Alicia had said about the hulking size of the man and the unearthly glint of moonlight in his inhumanly black eyes. Yes, she’d remind him that she and Scarlett were two women alone in the big house at night, that the servants all went to their own homes after supper except for Manigo, an old man, and Pansy, a small, weak girl.
Yes, she’d make the note urgent, and she’d dispatch it right away—on the very next trip of the boat that brought game from the plantation.
“But when will that be, Miss Eleanor? Rhett has to come now! That magnolia tree is practically a ladder from the ground to the piazza outside our rooms!” Scarlett clutched Mrs. Butler’s arm, shook it for emphasis.
Eleanor patted her hand. “Soon, dear, it’s bound to be soon. We haven’t had any duck for a month, and roast duck is a particular favorite of mine. Rhett knows that. Besides, everything will be all right now. Ross and his friends are going to patrol every night.”
Ross! Scarlett screamed inwardly. What could a drunk like Ross Butler do? Or any of the Charleston men? Most of them were old men or cripples or still boys. If they’d been any use, they wouldn’t have lost the stupid War. Why should anyone trust them to fight the Yankees now?
She battered her need against Eleanor Butler’s impenetrable optimism, and she lost.
For a while it seemed the patrols were effective. There were no reports of intruders, and everyone calmed down. Scarlett had her first “at home” day, which was so well attended that her Aunt Eulalie complained that there wasn’t enough cake to go around. Eleanor Butler tore up the note she had written Rhett. People went to church, went shopping, played whist, took out their evening clothes to air them and make repairs before the Season began.
Scarlett came in from her round of morning calls with glowing cheeks from walking too quickly. “Where’s Mrs. Butler?” she demanded of Manigo. When he replied that she was in the kitchen Scarlett ran to the back of the house.
Eleanor Butler looked up at Scarlett’s rushed entry. “Good news, Scarlett! I had a letter from Rosemary this morning. She’ll be home day after tomorrow.”
“Better wire her to stay,” Scarlett snapped. Her voice was harsh, emotionless. “The Yankee got to Harriet Madison last night. I just heard.” She looked at the table near Mrs. Butler. “Ducks? Those are ducks you’re plucking! The plantation boat came! I can go back to the plantation on it to get Rhett.”
“You can’t go alone in that boat with four men, Scarlett.”
“I can take Pansy, whether she likes it or not. Here, give me a sack and some of those biscuits. I’m hungry. I’ll eat them on the way.”
“But Scarlett—”
“But me no buts, Miss Eleanor. Just hand me the biscuits. I’m going.”
What am I doing? Scarlett thought, near panic. I should never have dashed off this way, Rhett’s going to be furious with me. And I must look awful. It’s bad enough just to show up where I don’t belong; at least I could look pretty. I had it all planned so different.
She had thought about it a thousand times, what it would be like when next she saw Rhett. Sometimes she imagined that he’d come home to the house late; she’d be in her nightdress, the one with the drawstring neck-tied loose and she’d be brushing her hair before bedtime. Rhett had always loved her hair, he said it was a live thing; sometimes in the early days—he’d brush it for her, to see the blue cracklings of electricity.
Often she pictured herself at the tea table, dropping a piece of sugar into a cup with the silver tongs elegantly held in her fingers. She’d be chatting cozily with Sally Brewton, and he’d see how much at home she was, how welcomed by Charleston’s most interesting people. He’d catch up her hand and kiss it, and the tongs would drop, but it wouldn’t matter . . .
Or she was with Miss Eleanor after supper, the two of them in their chairs before the fire, so comfortable together, so close, but with a place waiting for him. Only once had she envisioned going to the plantation, because she didn’t know what the place was like, except that Sherman’s men had burned it. Her daydream began allright—she and Miss Eleanor arrived with hampers of cakes and champagne in a lovely green-painted boat, resting against piles of silk cushions, holding bright flowered parasols. “Picnic,” they called out, a
nd Rhett laughed and ran to them, his arms open. But then it fizzled out, in blankness. Rhett hated picnics, for one thing. He said you might as well live in a cave if you were going to eat sitting on the ground like an animal instead of in a chair at a table like a civilized human being.
Certainly she had never thought of the possibility that she’d show up like this, squashed amid boxes and barrels of God knows what on a scabby boat that smelled to high heaven.
Now that she was away from the city, she was more worried about Rhett’s anger than about the prowling Yankee. Suppose he just tells the boatmen to turn right around and take me back?
The boatmen dipped their oars into the green-brown water only to steer; the tide’s invisible, powerful, slow current carried them. Scarlett looked impatiently at the banks of the wide river. It didn’t seem to her that they were moving at all. Everything was the same: wide stretches of tall brown grasses that swayed slowly—oh, so slowly—in the tidal current, and behind them thick woods draped with motionless gray curtains of Spanish moss, under them the tangled growth of overgrown evergreen shrubs. It was all so silent. Why weren’t there any birds singing, for heaven’s sake? And why was it getting so dark already?
Scarlett Page 20
