Rhett Butler's people (14 page)

"Edgar Puryear. So you're an officer now. Is that Henry Kershaw? My God, it's

Lieutenant

Henry Kershaw? And my old friend Andrew ..."

Andrew Ravanel was speechless, transfixed.

The laugh lines at the corners of Rosemary's brother's eyes were familiar and dear. How could she have forgotten how graceful he was? Rosemary walked to him as if in a dream.

Rhett's eyes stopped laughing.

Cassius struck the first gentle notes of Stephen Foster's "Slumber My Darling" and paused.

"Little Rosemary, my beloved sister." Her brother's eyes were moist as he took her hands. "May I have the honor of this dance?"

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Chapter

Chapter Nine

A Barbecue at a Georgia Plantation

Rhett Butler hadn't felt so helpless since that night twelve years ago, when he drank whiskey on Colonel Jack's porch and found nothing worth living for.

Fort Sumter fired upon! What did the fools think they were playing at!

Rhett said, "I'll take delivery at the railhead, Mr. Kennedy, my Atlanta bank will honor the draft."

Frank Kennedy stroked his skimpy gingerish beard and turned Rhett's check over, as if there might be more information on the blank side. "Yes, of course," he said. "Of course ..."

"If you are worried ..."

"Oh no, Mr. Butler. No sir." Frank Kennedy shook his head too vigorously.

The two men stood in the main room of Kennedy's Jonesboro store. Hay cradles, smoked hams, and pitchforks hung from the rafters. Aisles were crammed with dry goods and farm supplies. The store stank of liniment, molasses, and pine tar.

The respectable citizens of Charleston, Langston Butler among them, had ignited a war! The smug, virtuous, hymn-singing, damnable fools!

A negro clerk was cautiously ladling turpentine into an earthenware crock, another swept the floor. Despite his unprepossessing appearance, Kennedy was a man of consequence who owned fifty slaves, a second store in Atlanta, and thousands of acres in prime Georgia cotton.

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Rhett had bought Kennedy's stored crop and stood to make a fortune. He should have felt good about that.

He felt like hell.

"Your business reputation is excellent." Kennedy blinked and backtracked. "I mean ..."

Rhett was expressionless. "Some say I'm a renegade."

Kennedy ran a hand through his hair. "No offense, sir. I meant no offense." He folded Rhett's check and inserted it into his wallet. Having pocketed the wallet, he patted his pocket.

Rhett Butler didn't voice his opinion that renegades might rob you or call you out but they wouldn't fuss you to death.

A thought struck the embarrassed merchant. "Say, Butler." Unconsciously, Kennedy patted his pocket again. "Have you anything on this afternoon? Wouldn't you like a day in the country? John Wilkes's son is getting engaged and John is hosting a barbecue. Everyone's invited. Twelve Oaks' hospitality ... why, I can't praise it too much." His face went blank as he sought an encomium. "Twelve Oaks' hospitality is famous!" He pointed more or less northward. "All the way to Atlanta. Please join me. I'll bring you back in time for your train."

Since Rhett's train wouldn't leave until ten that evening and, in his dismal state of mind, an afternoon in the Jonesboro Hotel would be an eternity, Rhett Kershaw Butler accepted Frank Kennedy's invitation. More often than we care to admit, inconsequential decisions change our lives.

Kennedy's buggy rolled past thickets of tender glowing redbuds. Spice bushes perfumed the air. Dogwoods shimmered like ghosts in the woods beside the road.

This display, north Georgia at its most beautiful, plucked at Rhett's heart. He'd wintered in Manhattan, where war talk dominated every dining room and gentleman's club. Rhett had heard Abraham Lincoln speak at Cooper Union and thought the gangling, long-faced westerner would make a formidable enemy. A hundred thousand Yankees were forming into regiments. He'd traveled to New Haven, where a gun maker told the affable

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Mr. Butler he couldn't find the machinery he needed. "I have more contracts than I can fill," the man complained. "Butler, can you help me buy barrel lathes?"

One Sunday afternoon, Rhett toured the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a hundred warships were being fitted. Hammering and forging and coppering hulls and painters on scaffolds and hundreds of women sewing in the sail lofts. On a Sunday.

As the South prepared to fight Goliath with gallantry.

Damn the fools!

Rhett Butler loved the Southland's gentle courtesies and hospitality, the fiery tempers just beneath languid drawls. But if a fact was disagreeable, Southerners disbelieved that fact. For how could fact outfight gallantry?

Frank Kennedy misinterpreted Rhett's silence as a stranger's unease crashing a party whose host he'd never met. Frank provided reassurances. Their host, John Wilkes, was "a Georgia gentleman of the old school" and Wilkes's son, Ashley, although younger, of course, was of the old school, too. Ashley's bride-to-be was "a little slip of a thing," but Melanie Hamilton was, Frank assured Rhett, "a Spark."

Getting no response from his guest, Frank went on to name the young bloods who'd be there: the Tarletons, the Calverts, the Munroes, and the Fontaines. "When Tony Fontaine shot Brent Tarleton in the leg -- both of them were drunk as lords! -- they made a joke of it! A joke!" He shook his head: deploring men he half wished to be.

Rhett Butler wasn't too sentimental to profit from Southern blunders. The South grew two-thirds of the world's cotton and Rhett knew Lincoln's navy would blockade the Southern ports. After the ports were closed, cotton prices would skyrocket. Rhett's cotton would be safe in the Bahamas before Federal blockaders came on station.

The money was nothing: ashes in his mouth. Rhett felt like a grown-up watching children playing games. They yelled, they gestured, they pretended to be Indians or Redcoats or Yankee soldiers. They strutted and played at war. It made Rhett Butler want to weep. He was helpless to prevent it. Utterly helpless.

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His guest's silence made Frank Kennedy uncomfortable. He babbled, "John Wilkes is no rustic, Mr. Butler. No indeed. The Wilkeses' library has so many books; why, I expect John has hundreds of books! John Wilkes has read everything a gentleman should read and his son, Ashley, takes after John. As they say, 'The apple never falls far from the tree.' You'll meet Gerald O'Hara, too. Fine fellow! Gerald's from Savannah. Not originally, of course, originally, Gerald's from Ireland. Not that I have anything against the Irish. I'm keeping company with his daughter Suellen, so I couldn't have anything against the Irish, ha, ha."

When he looked for Rhett's reply, Rhett's eyes were remote. "At any rate," Frank filled the silence, "Gerald bought Tara Plantation and that's how Gerald came to Clayton County." Frank gave his horse a stern look. "Suellen is a peach." Frank slapped his knee. "A Georgia peach."

They continued in silence.

Rhett was picturing Charleston, where men who'd been Rhett's schoolmates were manning guns hammering Fort Sumter while their elders made speeches each more belligerent than the last.

Might Rhett persuade Rosemary and John to leave? "Just until this shakes out, John. California has opportunities for a man like you. Or London, John. Wouldn't your Meg love to visit London? And Rosemary ..."

Andrew Ravanel and Rosemary had created a scandal at that patriotic ball. John and Rosemary weren't speaking.

"My Suellen can be 'sharpish,'" Frank Kennedy was saying. "But she soon repents. You're a man of the world, Butler. You know what I mean."

Rhett held his sharpish tongue.

They forded the Flint River and trotted briskly up a rise. The flat-roofed, many-chimneyed plantation house was smaller than Broughton but grand enough for all that. Broad Corinthian columns supported a roof that shaded broad verandas on three sides of the house.

"You'll see for yourself," Frank Kennedy insisted. "Twelve Oaks' hospitality -- why, it's legendary!"

There was a bustle at the turnaround, where riders dismounted and carriages disgorged their occupants. Negro grooms removed horses and rigs

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while guests exchanged enthusiastic greetings with neighbors they hadn't seen since last week.

The tang of barbecued pork flavored the hickory smoke.

On the veranda, maidens in their prettiest outfits flirted with beaux in tight gray trousers and ruffled linen shirts. Older folks solemnly considered symptoms and remedies while children darted like barn swallows across the lawn.

Was this the last glorious, graceful Southern afternoon? Or was it the Southland's funeral?

Frank and Rhett were greeted by a white-haired patrician with a young woman at his side. "John Wilkes, John's daughter, Miss Honey Wilkes: Mr. Rhett Butler. Mr. Butler and I had business today and I thought we'd flee our cares for a while. John, I hope you don't mind."

"My home is open to any gentleman," John Wilkes said simply. "Welcome, sir, to Twelve Oaks."

"You are too kind."

"Your accent, sir?"

"The Low Country, sir, born and reared."

Wilkes frowned, "Butler ... Rhett Butler ... Wasn't there ... Don't I recall ...?"

The flicker in the older man's eyes told Rhett that Wilkes had indeed 'recalled' ... but Wilkes's smile never faltered. "No matter, I suppose. Tom! Bring the salver. Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Butler have had a dusty journey."

Honey Wilkes was waving eagerly. "Oh look, Daddy. It's the O'Haras. Frank Kennedy! Shame on you! Aren't you going to help Suellen down?"

Frank hastened to his duty. With a polite nod to his host, Rhett withdrew to a quiet corner of the veranda. He wished he hadn't come.

Twelve Oaks buzzed like a honeybee swarm on its mating flight. There'd be marriages made today and doubtless a scandal or two. Swirling through the floral and Parisian perfumes, amid the gaiety, flirting, and jests was romance, as fresh as if no man or maid had experienced romance before.

Rhett's eyes fell on a very young woman in a green dancing frock and his heart surged. "Dear God," he whispered.

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She wasn't a great beauty: her chin was pointed and her jaw had too much strength. She was fashionably pale -- ladies never exposed their skin to the brutal sun -- and unusually animated. As Rhett watched, she touched a young buck's arm both intimately and carelessly.

When the girl felt Rhett's gaze she looked up. For one scorching second, her puzzled green eyes met his black eyes before she tossed her head dismissively and resumed her flirtation.

Forgotten the looming War. Forgotten the devastation he expected. Hope welled up in Rhett Butler like a healing spring. "My God." Rhett moistened dry lips. "She's just like me!"

His heart slowed. He looked away, smiling at himself. It had been a long time since he'd made a fool of himself over a woman.

Rhett followed his nose around the plantation house to the barbecue where, scattered under shade trees, picnic tables were draped with Belgian linen and laid with English silver and French china. He took a seat at a half-empty table and a servant delivered Rhett's plate and glass of wine. When his thoughts circled back to that girl he shook his head and drank a second glass of wine.

Although the pork had a deep, smoky flavor and the potato salad was a perfect admixture of tart and sweet, two drunk young bucks at the foot of the table were glowering at the stranger, and before long they'd make a remark that couldn't be overlooked. Rhett refused dessert and decamped to the shade of a venerable black walnut tree to light a cigar. When John Wilkes joined him, Rhett complimented his host. "Hospitality like yours, sir, stops at the Mason-Dixon line. Hospitality cannot survive Yankee winters.

"You are too kind. Mr. Kennedy tells me you've been up north recently."

"Yes, sir."

"Will they fight?"

"They will. Abraham Lincoln won't show a white flag."

"But surely, our brave young men ..."

"Mr. Wilkes, I am a stranger and you welcomed me to your home. I believe that defines the Good Samaritan. I am grateful, sir."