Rhett Butler's people (8 page)

Rosemary told her brother that Andrew Ravanel had swept Mary Loring off her feet. All Charleston expected Andrew and Mary to be affianced, but, attended by salacious rumors, Mary Loring left suddenly for Split Rock, North Carolina. Andrew was now courting Cynthia Peterson.

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"My maid Cleo means well but is upset by trifles. Cleo is a flibbertigibbet!

"You remember pert little Sudie? Well, Sudie has jumped the broomstick with Hercules and has her firstborn! Hercules couldn't be prouder. He sends his regards!"

She concluded this letter, "Please do write. I miss you awfully and yearn to hear all your news. Your loving sister, Rosemary."

Hercules told Rosemary where to send her letters. When Rosemary asked how Hercules knew Rhett's whereabouts, he laughed. "Miss Rosemary, don't you reckon horses talk to each other? Everywhere they goes, horses is talkin'. I sneaks into the stalls at night and listens."

So Rosemary addressed letters to "Rhett Butler, San Francisco, California Territory" and "Rhett Butler, General Delivery, New Orleans, Louisiana." She sealed them carefully and doubled the postage. "Be sure and mail this today, Uncle."

"Yes, Miss," Uncle Solomon replied, although for some reason, her letters made the old houseman uneasy.

Rosemary never heard from her brother, and as the years passed, her weekly letters became fortnightly and then monthly.

Rosemary's final letter was written on the eve of her debut to Charleston society at the Jockey Club Ball. In that letter, sixteen-year-old Rosemary confided her fears that no young man would sign her dance card and that her white satin gown was more girlish than womanly.

Cleo fussed at her: "We ain't gonna get ready less'n you quit scribblin' and get to dressin', Missy." Rosemary ignored her maid and went out to the yard, where Hercules was grooming Gero.

Without preliminary, Rosemary said, "Writing to my brother is useless. My brother is dead."

"No'm, Master Rhett ain't dead."

Rosemary put her hands firmly on her hips. "How do you know?"

"The horses, they -- "

She stamped her foot, "Hercules! I am no longer a child."

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"Yes, Miss." He sighed. "I can see you ain't." As Rosemary stormed back to the house, he returned to grooming. "Be easy now, Gero. Miss Rosemary distress 'count of she goin' to the Jockey Club and she feared the young gentlemen won't favor her."

Rosemary concluded her letter: "Although some of my letters may have gone astray, you must have received others. Your silence is too cruel. How I wish I knew your whereabouts and circumstances. I will always love you, brother, but in the face of your obstinate silence, I will not write again."

Rosemary was as good as her word. She didn't write Rhett that her debut had been notable, that Andrew Ravanel had flirted outrageously and taken four waltzes. Nor did she tell him that during the intermission, Grandmother Fisher had said, "John Haynes is thoroughly besotted with you. A girl could do worse than John Haynes."

Nor that she had replied, tossing her head, "John Haynes can't sit a horse. It's a wonder he doesn't injure himself."

"But Andrew Ravanel can sit a horse?"

"He is the handsomest man in Charleston. Every belle has set her cap for Andrew."

"I believe what you call a 'cap,' dear, Mr. Ravanel's sporting friends call a 'scalp,'" Constance Fisher replied.

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Chapter

Chapter Four

Race Week

Three years before the War, a full nine years after Rhett Butler left the Low Country, on a February afternoon Rosemary Butler stood before her pier glass, dissatisfied. She thought herself too tall and her torso was un-fashionably long. Her entirely ordinary auburn hair was parted in the center and curled in ringlets. Her features were, Rosemary believed, too strong, and her mouth too generous. Her candid gray eyes, she thought, were her only good feature. Rosemary stuck her tongue out at the mirror. "You are no friend!" she announced.

Rosemary's dress, a textured print in green polished cotton, was new for Race Week.

Race Week was the pinnacle of Charleston's social season. The rice had been harvested, dried, winnowed, hulled, sold, and shipped; the negroes had been given their annual clothing issue and enjoyed their Christmas holiday. The planter families were in town and their mornings hummed with gossip about the rare doings of the night before and anticipations for the evening ahead. Smart new carriages and refurbished, highly polished older ones promenaded in the great loop down East Bay, up Meeting Street, and down East Bay again. The latest Paris fashions (as adapted by London pattern makers and sewed by Charleston's free colored seamstresses) were admired at the Jockey Club and St. Cecilia Society balls. Yankee excursionists gawked at grand town houses, throngs of negroes, splendid racehorses, and the most beautiful belles in the South.

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Cleo burst into Rosemary's bedroom, wringing her hands. "Missy, they's somebody here to see you."

"I'll be down directly. Show the gentleman into the drawing room."

"He ain't... Missy, he waitin' in the yard. He ... he ain't no gentleman!" Cleo's lips clamped tight. She would say no more.

The public rooms of Langston Butler's Greek Revival town house had carved marble mantels and varnished cherry wainscoting. A shaded piazza encircled the entire second story.

The servants' staircase at the back of the house was narrow, steep, and unpainted. Up these stairs, servants carried plates and tureens for Langston Butler's political dinners. Armloads of fresh linens came up these steps. Down came dirty sheets, pillowcases, underclothing, and tablecloths. Down, carefully, came the family's chamber pots.

During this season, just fifteen Broughton servants attended the Butlers. Uncle Solomon, Cleo, Hercules and Sudie, and Cook had a room each above the kitchen/laundry house. Lesser servants slept in cramped quarters above the stable.

Usually, the yard was a beehive of washing, laundering, mucking out stables, and grooming horses, but Gero was running in today's noon race and everybody was at the racecourse.

"Hello?" Rosemary called.

The stable smelled of axle grease, neat's-foot oil, and manure. Curious horses lifted their heads above their stall doors.

Rosemary's visitor clutched his parcel so hard, he'd indented it.

"Why, is it Tunis? Tunis Bonneau?"

Like his father, Tunis Bonneau had been a fisherman and market hunter, but these days Tunis was a pilot for Haynes & Son. Rosemary knew the man by sight, although they had never spoken.

"Tunis Bonneau ... didn't someone tell me you'd married?"

"Yes'm. Last September. My Ruthie, she's Reverend Prescott's eldest."

Tunis's wire-rimmed spectacles and solemn expression made him seem a dark edition of a Puritan schoolmaster. His clothing was spotless, pressed, and he smelled faintly of lye soap.

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"I was asked to bring you this." Bonneau pushed his parcel at Rosemary and turned to leave.

"Wait, Tunis. Please. There is no card. Who sent it?" Untied, the parcel revealed an oversized yellow silk scarf fringed with exquisite black knots. "My goodness! What a gorgeous shawl."

"Yes, Miss."

When the virginal girl settled the silk on her shoulders, it caressed and made her feel vaguely uneasy. "Tunis, who sent this to me?"

"Miss Rosemary. I don't need trouble with Master Langston."

"Was it... was it Andrew Ravanel?"

"It weren't Andrew Ravanel gifted you. No, Miss."

Rosemary said determinedly, "You will not leave until you tell me."

Tunis Bonneau took off his glasses and rubbed the mark they'd left on his nose. "He reckoned his letters weren't getting to you, so he asked me to bring you this. I seen him in Freeport. He ain't changed none." Tunis turned the glasses in his hand as if they were an unfamiliar object. "I sailed as pilot on the

John B. Elliot,

carryin' rice and cotton, bringin' back locomotive wheels for the Georgia railroad. Soon as I seen him, I knowed who he was. Rhett Butler ain't changed none."

Rosemary felt a catch at her throat and she gripped a stall rail to steady herself.

"Rhett been with them freebooters in Nicaragua, but he quit that business."

"But he's ... Rhett's dead!"

"Oh no, Miss. Mr. Rhett ain't dead. Why, he's right lively. That man always sees the amusin' side of things."

"But... but... not a single word to me in nine years."

Tunis Bonneau breathed on his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. "Miss Rosemary, your brother did write to you. He wrote plenty."

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Chapter

Chapter Five

Notes in Bottles

Occidental Hotel,

San Francisco

, California Territory

May 17, 1849

Dear Little Sister,

Although I disembarked from

The Glory of the Seas

six long hours ago, the earth still wobbles beneath my feet.

Our captain and his son rowed we passengers ashore fearing

The Glory

might join the hundred ships deserted by sailors who became gold seekers. Their masts are a dismal forest beside

Long Wharf.

The wharf itself was a hubbub of runners for restaurants and hotels, brothels and gambling houses. Sharpers offered to buy and sell gold. One well-dressed man diffidently begged a meal.

I played cards on the voyage around the Horn. Because they were going to be rich soon, the aspirant gold seekers were contemptuous of the cash money already in their possession and played as if prudence showed no faith in their glorious future. Consequently I arrived in this city with a considerable "grubstake" (the money the argonaut uses to finance his prospecting).

During our tedious voyage around the Horn, the argonauts explained why they had uprooted themselves from occupations, friends, and family for a dangerous voyage and uncertain fiiture. To a man, and earnestly, they insisted they were not doing it for themselves. No indeed! They were

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adventuring for those selfsame wives and children they'd left behind. They'd left their families for the sake of their families! Apparently, American wives and children cannot be satisfied until an argonaut showers them with gold!

This is not

Charleston. San Francisco boardwalks flank mud streets, which suck the shoes off my feet. Tents and wooden shacks coexist side by side with brick buildings so new, they glisten.

Three years ago, before gold was discovered,

San Francisco had eight hundred citizens. Today it boasts thirty-six thousand. From the wharf to the sheltering hills, the city echoes with the banging and clattering of new construction. In this town, Sister, even loafers with nowhere to go hurry to get there.

Chinese, Irish, Italians, Connecticut Yankees, and Mexicans: The

new city hums with new people and newfangled notions.

Although I miss you and my Low Country friends, I am no exile. I feel the exultation of a prisoner released into the sunlight of a new morning. There are cities besides

Charleston and they are good places to be!

Please do write me here at the hotel. They will hold my mail for me. Tell me about Charlotte and Grandmother Fisher and especially about your doings. Of all my old life, Dear Sister, I miss you most.

Your Loving Brother, Rhett

March 12, 1850

Goody ear's Bar, California Territory

Dear Little Sister,

Goodyear's Bar is a surpassing ugly gold camp: a high-country mudflat spotted with dugouts, tents, and windowless log huts where lucky miners occasionally earn two thousand dollars from a

wheelbarrow of pay dirt.