Scarlett Page 9

  But she couldn’t be seen to be involved. And she couldn’t trust anyone except Colleton. He had to agree to take the job, she had to make him agree. She put her small hand on his arm. It looked very delicate in its tight kid glove. “Mr. Colleton, it’ll break my heart if you say no to me. I need somebody very special to help me.” She looked at him with appealing helplessness in her eyes. Too bad he wasn’t taller. It was hard to be a frail little lady with somebody your own size. Still, it was often these banty rooster little men who were most protective of women. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you turn me down.”

  Colleton’s arm stiffened. “Mrs. Butler, you sold me green lumber once, after you told me it was cured. I don’t do business twice with somebody that cheats me once.”

  “That must have been a mistake, Mr. Colleton. I was green myself, just learning the lumber business. You remember how it was those days. The Yankees were breathing down our necks every waking minute. I was scared to death all the time.” Her eyes swam in unshed tears, and her very lightly rouged lips trembled. She was a small forlorn figure. “My husband, Mr. Kennedy, was killed when the Yankees broke up a Klan meeting.”

  Colleton’s direct, knowing gaze was disconcerting. His eyes were on a level with hers, and they were as hard as marble. Scarlett took her hand off his sleeve. What was she going to do? She couldn’t fail, not in this. He had to take the job. “I made a deathbed promise to my dearest friend, Mr. Colleton.” Her tears were unplanned now. “Mrs. Wilkes asked me to help, and now I’m asking you.” The whole story tumbled out—how Melanie had always sheltered Ashley . . . Ashley’s ineptness as a businessman . . . his attempt to bury himself with his wife . . . the stacks of unsold lumber . . . the need for secrecy . . .

  Colleton held up his hand to stop her. “All right, Mrs. Butler. If it’s for Mrs. Wilkes, I’ll take the job.” His hand dropped, extended. “I’ll shake on it, you’ll get the best-built houses with the best materials in them.”

  Scarlett put her hand in his. “Thank you,” she said. She felt as if she’d scored the triumph of her life.

  It was only some hours later that she remembered that she hadn’t intended to use the best of everything, only the best lumber. The miserable houses were going to cost her a fortune, and out of her own hard-earned money, too. She wouldn’t get any credit for helping Ashley, either. Everybody would still slam their doors in her face.

  Not really everybody. I’ve got plenty of my own friends, and they’re a lot more fun than those frumpy old Atlanta people.

  Scarlett put aside the sketch Joe Colleton had made on a paper sack for her to study and approve. She’d be a lot more interested when he gave her the numbers for his estimate; what difference did it make what the houses looked like or where he put the stairs?

  She took her velvet-covered visiting book from a drawer and again to make a list. She was going to give a party. A big one, with musicians and rivers of champagne and huge amounts of the best, most expensive food. Now that she was done with deep mourning, it was time to let her friends know that she could be invited to their parties, and the best way to do it was to invite them to a party of her own.

  Her eye skimmed quickly past the names of Atlanta’s old families. They all think I should be in deep mourning for Melly, no sense asking them. And there’s no need to wrap myself in crape, either. She wasn’t my sister, only my sister-in-law, and I’m not even sure that counts since Charles Hamilton was my first husband and there’ve been two since him.

  Scarlett’s shoulders slumped. Charles Hamilton had nothing to do with anything, nor did wearing crape. She was in the truest kind of mourning for Melanie; it was a perpetual weight and worry in her heart. She missed the gentle, loving friend who had been so much more important to her than she had ever realized; the world was colder and darker without Melanie. And so lonely. Scarlett had been back from the country for only two days, but she had known enough loneliness in the two nights to strike fear deep into her heart.

  She could have told Melanie about Rhett leaving; Melanie was the only person she could ever confide in about such a disgraceful thing. Melly would have told her what she needed to hear, too. “Of course he’ll be back,” she would have said, “he loves you so.” Those were her very words, right before she died. “Be kind to Captain Butler, he loves you so.”

  Just the thought of Melanie’s words made Scarlett feel better. If Melly said that Rhett loved her, then he did, it wasn’t only her own wishful thinking. Scarlett shook off her gloominess, straightened her spine. She didn’t have to be lonely at all. And it didn’t matter if Atlanta’s Old Guard never spoke to her again ever. She had plenty of friends. Why, the party list was already two pages long, and she was only up to letter L in her book.

  The friends Scarlett was planning to entertain were the most flamboyant and most successful of the horde of scavengers that had descended on Georgia in the days of the Reconstruction government. Many of the original group had left when the government was ousted in 1871, but a large number stayed, to enjoy their big houses and the tremendous fortunes they had made picking the bones of the dead Confederacy. They had no temptation to go “home.” Their origins were better forgotten.

  Rhett had always despised them. He dubbed them “the dregs” and left the house when Scarlett gave her lavish parties. Scarlett thought he was silly, and told him so. “Rich people are ever so much more fun than poor people. Their clothes and carriages and jewels are better, and they give you better things to eat and drink when you go to their houses.”

  But nothing at the houses of any of her friends was nearly as elegant as the refreshments at Scarlett’s parties. This one, she was determined, would be the best reception of all. She started a second list headed “Things to Remember” with a note to order ice swans for the cold foods and ten new cases of champagne. A new gown, too. She’d have to go to her dressmaker’s place immediately after she left the order for the invitations at the engraver’s.

  Scarlett tilted her head to admire the crisp white ruffles of the Mary Stuart style cap. The point on the forehead was really very becoming. It emphasized the black arch of her eyebrows and the shining green of her eyes. Her hair looked like black silk where it tumbled in curls on each side of the ruffles. Who would ever have thought that mourning garb could be so flattering?

  She turned from side to side, looking over her shoulders at her reflection in the pier glass. The jet bead trim and tassels on her black gown glittered in a very satisfactory way.

  “Ordinary” mourning wasn’t awful like deep mourning, there was plenty of leeway in it if you had magnolia-white skin to show in a low-cut black gown.

  She walked quickly to her dressing table and touched her shoulders and throat with perfume. She’d better hurry, her guests would be arriving any minute. She could hear the musicians tuning up downstairs. Her eyes feasted on the disorderly pile of thick white cards among her silver-backed brushes and hand mirrors. Invitations had started pouring in as soon as her friends knew that she was reentering the social whirl; she was going to be busy for weeks and weeks to come. And then there’d be more invitations, and then she’d give another reception. Or maybe a dance during the Christmas season. Yes, things were going to be just fine. She was as excited as a girl who’d never been to a party before. Well, it was no wonder. It had been more than seven months since she’d been to one.

  Except for Tony Fontaine’s coming-home. She smiled, remembering. Darling Tony, with his shy-heeled boots and silver saddle. She wished he could be at her party tonight. Wouldn’t people’s eyes pop right out of their heads if he did his trick of twirling his six-shooters!

  She had to go—the musicians were playing in tune, it must be late.

  Scarlett hurried down the red-carpeted stairs, sniffing appreciatively when she reached the scent of the hot-house flowers that filled huge vases in every room. Her eyes glowed with pleasure when she moved from room to room to check that everything was ready. All was perfection. Thank heaven Pansy was back f
rom Tara. She was very good at making the other servants do their jobs, much better than the new butler hired to replace Pork. Scarlett took a glass of champagne from the tray the new man held out to her. At least he was good at serving, quite stylish in fact, and Scarlett did so like for things to be stylish.

  Just then the doorbell sounded. She startled the manservant by smiling happily, then she moved towards the entrance hall to greet her friends.

  They arrived in a steady stream for almost an hour and the house filled with the sound of loud voices, the overpowering smell of perfume and powder, the brilliant colors of silks and satins, rubies and sapphires.

  Scarlett moved through the melée smiling and laughing, flirting idly with the men, accepting the fulsome compliments of the women. They were so happy to see her again, they’d missed her so much, no one’s parties were as exciting as hers, no one’s home as beautiful, no one’s gown as fashionable, no one’s hair as glossy, no one’s figure as youthful, no one’s complexion so perfect and creamy.

  I’m having a good time. It’s a wonderful party.

  She glanced over the silver dishes and trays on the long polished table to see that the servants were keeping them all replenished. Quantities of food—excesses of food—were important to her, for she would never forget completely what it had been like to come so near to starvation at the end of the War. Her friend Mamie Bart caught her eye and smiled. A streak of buttery sauce from the half-eaten oyster patty in Mamie’s hand had dribbled from the corner of her mouth down onto the diamond necklace around her fat neck. Scarlett turned away in disgust. Mamie was going to be big as an elephant one of these days. Thank goodness, I can eat all I want and never gain a pound.

  She smiled entrancingly at Harry Connington, her friend Sylvia’s husband. “You must have found some elixir, Harry, you look ten years younger than you did last time I saw you.” She watched with malicious amusement as Harry sucked in his stomach. His face turned red, then faintly purple before he abandoned the effort to hold it in. Scarlett laughed aloud, then moved away.

  A burst of laughter caught her attention, and she drifted towards the trio of men who were its source. She’d like very much to hear something funny, even if it was one of those jokes that ladies had to pretend not to understand.

  “. . . so I says to myself, ‘Bill, one man’s panic is another man’s profit, and I know which one of those men old Bill’s going to be.’ ”

  Scarlett started to turn away. She wanted to have a good time tonight, and talking about the Panic wasn’t her idea of fun. Still, maybe she’d learn something. She was smarter when she was sound asleep than Bill Weller was on his best day, she was sure of that. If he was making money out of the Panic, she wanted to know how he was doing it. Quietly she stepped closer.

  “. . . these dumb Southerners, they been a problem for me ever since I come down here,” Bill was confessing. “You just can’t do nothing with a man who don’t have natural human greed, so all the triple-your-money bond deals and certificates for gold mines that I turned loose on them laid a big egg. They was working harder than any nigger ever did and putting by every nickel they earned for the next rainy day. Turned out that plenty of ’em had a boxful of bonds and such already. From the Confederate government.” Bill’s booming laugh led the laughter of the other men.

  Scarlett was fuming. “Dumb Southerners” indeed! Her own darling Pa had a boxful of Confederate bonds. So did all the good people in Clayton County. She tried to walk away, but she was hemmed in by people behind her who’d also been attracted by the laughter in the group around Bill Weller. “I got the picture after a while,” Weller went on. “They just didn’t put much trust in paper. Nor nothing else that I tried, neither. I sent out medicine shows and lightning rods and all the sure-fire money-makers, but none of them so much as struck a spark. I tell you, boys, it hurt my pride.” He made a lugubrious face, then grinned widely, showing three large gold molars.

  “I don’t have to tell you that me and Lula wasn’t exactly going to go wanting if I didn’t come up with something. In the good, fat days when the Republicans had Georgia in hand, I piled up enough from those railroad contracts the boys voted me so that we could have lived high on the hog even if I’d been fool enough to actually go out and build the railroads. But I like to keep my hand in, and Lula was starting to fret because I was around the house too much, not having any business to tend to. Then—glory be—along come the Panic, and all the Rebs grabbed their savings out of the banks and put the money in their mattresses. Every house—even the shacks—was a golden opportunity I just couldn’t let pass me by.”

  “Stop your gassing, Bill, what did you come up with? I’m getting thirsty waiting for you to finish patting yourself on the back and get to the point.” Amos Bart punctuated his impatience with a practiced spit that fell short of its targeted spittoon.

  Scarlett was feeling impatient, too. Impatient to get away.

  “Keep your shirt on, Amos, I’m coming to it. What was the way to get in those mattresses? I ain’t the revival-preacher kind, I like to sit behind my desk and let my employees do the hustling. That’s just what I was doing, sitting in my leather swivel chair, when I looked out my window and saw a funeral going by. It was like lightning striking. There ain’t a roof in Georgia that don’t have some dearly departed once lived under it.”

  Scarlett stared with horror at Bill Weller as he described the fraud that was adding to his riches. “The mothers and widows are the easiest, and there’s more of them than anything else. They don’t blink an eye when my boys tell them that the Confederate Veterans are putting up monuments on all the battlefields, and they empty out those mattresses quicker than you can say ‘Abe Lincoln’ to pay for their boy’s name to be carved in the marble.” It was worse than Scarlett could have imagined.

  “You sly old fox, Bill, that’s pure genius!” Amos exclaimed, and the men in the group laughed more loudly than before. Scarlett felt as if she were going to be sick. Nonexistent railroads and gold mines had never concerned her, but the mothers and widows Bill Weller was cheating were her own people. He might be sending his men right now to Beatrice Tarleton, or Cathleen Calvert, or Dimity Munroe, or any other woman in Clayton County who had lost a son or a brother or a husband.

  Her voice cut through the laughter like a knife. “That’s the most low-down, filthy story I ever heard in my life. You disgust me, Bill Weller. All of you disgust me. What do you know about Southerners—about decent people anywhere? You’ve never had a decent thought or done a decent thing in all your lives!” She pushed with hands outstretched through the thunderstruck men and women who had gathered around Weller, then ran, rubbing her hands on her skirts to wipe off the stain of having touched them.

  The dining room and the glittering silver dishes of elaborate food were in front of her; her gorge rose at the mixed smells of rich, greasy sauces and spattered spittoons. She saw in her mind the lamplit table at the Fontaines’, the simple meal of home-cured ham and home-made corn bread and home-grown greens. She belonged with them; they were her people, not these vulgar, trashy, flashy women and men.

  Scarlett turned to face Weller and his group. “Dregs!” she yelled. “That’s what you are. Dregs. Get out of my house, get out of my sight, you make me sick!”

  Mamie Bart made the mistake of trying to soothe her. “Come on, honey—” she said, holding out her jewelled hand.

  Scarlett recoiled before she could be touched. “Especially you, you greasy sow.”

  “Well, I never,” Mamie Bart’s voice quavered. “I’m damn well not going to put up with being talked to like this. I wouldn’t stay if you begged me on your knees, Scarlett Butler.”

  A shoving, angry stampede began, and in less than ten minutes the rooms were empty of everything except the debris left behind. Scarlett made her way through spilled food and champagne, broken plates and glasses, without looking down. She must keep her head high, the way her mother had taught her. She imagined that she was back at Tara, with
a heavy volume of the Waverley novels balanced on her head, and she climbed the stairs with her back as straight as a tree, her chin perfectly perpendicular to her shoulders.

  Like a lady. The way her mother had taught her. Her head was swimming and her legs trembled, but she climbed without pausing. A lady never let it show when she was tired or upset.

  “High time she did that, and then some,” said the cornetist. The octet had played waltzes from behind the palms for many of Scarlett’s receptions.

  One of the violinists spat accurately into a potted palm. “Too late, I say. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.”

  Above their heads Scarlett was lying face down on her silkcovered bed, sobbing as if her heart was broken. She had thought she was going to have such a good time.

  Later that night, when the house was quiet and dark, Scarlett went downstairs for a drink to help her sleep. All evidence of the party was gone, except for the elaborate flower arrangements and the half-burned candles in the six-armed candelabra on the bare dining room table.

  Scarlett lit the candles and blew out her lamp. Why should she skulk around in near-darkness like some kind of thief? It was her house, her brandy, and she could do as she pleased.

  She selected a glass, took it and the decanter to the table, sat in the armchair at the head. It was her table, too.

  The brandy sent a relaxing warmth through her body. Scarlett sighed. Thank God. Another drink, and my nerves should stop jumping around like they’re doing. She filled the elegant little cordial glass again, tossed the brandy down her throat with a deft twist of the wrist. Mustn’t hurry, she thought, pouring. It’s not ladylike.