Scarlett (51 page)

Jerome stalked off to report to the other servants. Scarlett’s demands were an affront to them all. Not because they meant more work; in fact she was only asking for what the servants always had for breakfast themselves. No, what bothered Jerome and the others was her youth and energy. She was a loud disruption of the house’s shrine-like, muted atmosphere. The servants could only hope that she would leave soon, and without wreaking too much havoc.

After breakfast, Eulalie and Pauline took her into each of the rooms on the first floor, talking eagerly about the parties and receptions they had seen in their youth, correcting each other constantly and arguing about decades-old details. Scarlett paused for a long time in front of the portrait of three young girls, trying to see her mother’s composed adult features in the chubby-cheeked five-year-old of the painting. Scarlett had felt isolated in Charleston’s web of intermarried generations. It was good to be in the house where her mother had been born and reared, in a city where she was part of the web.

“You must have about a million cousins in Savannah,” she said to the aunts. “Tell me about them. Can I meet them? They’re my cousins, too.”

Pauline and Eulalie looked confused. Cousins? There were the Prudhommes, their mother’s family. But only one very old gentleman was in Savannah, the widower of their mother’s sister. The rest of the family had moved to New Orleans many years ago. “Everyone in New Orleans speaks French,” Pauline explained. And as for the Robillards, they were the only ones. “Père had lots of cousins in France, brothers, too—two of them. But he was the only one to come to America.”

Eulalie broke in. “But we have many, many friends in Savannah, Scarlett. You can certainly meet them. Sister and I will be paying calls and leaving cards today, if Père doesn’t need us to stay home with him.”

“I’ll have to be back by three,” Scarlett said quickly. She didn’t want to be out when Rhett arrived, nor did she want to be other than at her best. She’d need plenty of time to bathe and dress before the train from Charleston got in.

But Rhett didn’t come, and when Scarlett left the carefully chosen bench in the immaculately maintained formal garden behind the house she felt chilled to the bone. She had refused her aunts’ invitation to accompany them that evening to the musicale they’d been invited to. If it was going to be anything like the tedious reminiscences of the old ladies they’d called on that morning, she’d be bored to death. But her grandfather’s malevolent eyes when he received his family for ten minutes before supper made her change her mind. Anything would be better than being alone in the house with Grandfather Robillard.

The Telfair sisters, Mary and Margaret, were the recognized cultural guardians of Savannah, and their musicale was nothing like the ones Scarlett had known before. Usually they were just ladies singing, showing off their “accomplishments,” accompanied by other ladies on the pianoforte. It was obligatory that ladies sing a little, play the piano a little, draw or paint watercolors a little and do fancy needlework a little. At the Telfairs’ house on Saint James’ Square, the standards were much more demanding. The handsome double drawing rooms had rows of gilt chairs across their centers, and at the curved end of one of the rooms a piano and a harp and six chairs with music stands in front of them promised some real performances. Scarlett made mental notes of all the arrangements. The double drawing rooms at the Butler house could easily be fixed the same way, and it would be a different kind of party from what everyone else did. She’d have a reputation as an elegant hostess in no time at all. She wouldn’t be old and frumpy looking like the Telfair sisters, either. Or as dowdy as the younger women who were here. Why was it that everywhere in the South people thought they had to look poor and patched to prove they were respectable?

The string quartet bored her, and she thought the harpist would never finish. She did enjoy the singers, even though she had never heard of opera; at least there was a man singing with the woman instead of two girls together. And after the songs in foreign languages, they did a group of songs she knew. The man’s voice was wonderfully romantic in “Beautiful Dreamer” and it throbbed with emotion when he sang “Come Back to Erin, Mavourneen, Mavourneen.” She had to admit he sounded a lot better than Gerald O’Hara in his cups.

I wonder what Pa would make of all this? Scarlett almost giggled aloud. He’d probably sing along and add something from a flask to the punch, too. Then he’d ask for “Peg in a Low Back’d Car.” Just as she had asked Rhett to sing it…

The room and the people in it and the music disappeared for her, and she heard Rhett’s voice booming inside the overturned sloop, felt his arms holding her to his warmth. He can’t do without me. He’ll come to me this time. It’s my turn.

Scarlett didn’t realize that she was smiling during a touching rendition of “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”

The next day she sent a telegram to her Uncle Henry, giving her address in Savannah. She hesitated, then added a question. Had Rhett transferred any money to her?

What if Rhett tried to play some kind of game again and stopped sending the money to keep up the house on Peachtree Street? No, surely he wouldn’t do that. Just the opposite. His letter said he was sending the half million.

It couldn’t be true. He was only bluffing when he wrote all those hurtful things. Like opium, he’d said. He couldn’t do without her. He’d come after her. It would be harder for him to swallow his pride than it would for any other man, but he’d come. He had to. He couldn’t do without her. Especially not after what happened on the beach…

Scarlett felt a warm weakness travelling through her body, and she forced herself to remember where she was. She paid for the telegram and listened attentively when the telegraph operator gave her directions to the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy. Then she set off at such a rapid pace that Pansy almost had to run to keep up. While she was waiting for Rhett to come, she should have just enough time to track down Carreen’s Mother Superior and get her to talk to the Bishop, as Rhett had suggested.

Savannah’s Convent of the Sisters of Mercy was a big white building with a cross over its tall closed doors, surrounded by a tall iron fence with closed gates surmounted by iron crosses. Scarlett’s rapid pace slowed, then she stopped. It was very different from the handsome brick house in Charleston.

“Is you going in there, Miss Scarlett?” Pansy’s voice had a quaver in it. “I better wait outside. I’m a Baptist.”

“Don’t be such a goose!” Pansy’s fearfulness gave Scarlett courage. “It’s not a church, just a home for nice ladies like Miss Carreen.” The gate opened at her touch.

Yes, said the elderly nun who opened the door when Scarlett rang the bell, yes, Charleston’s Mother Superior was there. No, she couldn’t ask her to see Mrs. Butler right now. There was a meeting in progress. No, she didn’t know how long it would last, nor whether the Mother Superior would be able to see Mrs. Butler when it was over. Perhaps Mrs. Butler would like to see the schoolrooms; the convent was very proud of its school. Or it was possible that a tour of the new Cathedral building could be arranged. After that, perhaps the Mother Superior could be sent a message, if the meeting had ended.

Scarlett forced herself to smile. The last thing on earth I want to do is admire a bunch of children, she thought angrily. Or look at some church, either. She was about to say that she’d simply come back later, then the nun’s words gave her an idea. They were building a new Cathedral, were they? That cost money. Maybe her offer to buy back Carreen’s share of Tara would be looked on more favorably here than it had been in Charleston, just like Rhett said. After all, Tara was Georgia property, probably controlled by the Bishop of Georgia. Suppose she offered to buy a stained glass window in the new Cathedral as Carreen’s dowry? The cost would be much higher than Carreen’s share of Tara was worth, and she’d make it clear that the window was in exchange, not in addition. The Bishop would listen to reason, and then he’d tell the Mother Superior what to do.

Scarlett’s smile became warmer, wider. “I’d be honored to see the Cathedral, Sister, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”

Pansy’s mouth gaped open when she looked up at the soaring twin spires of the handsome Gothic-design Cathedral. The workmen on the scaffolding that surrounded the nearly completed towers looked small and nimble, like brightly garbed squirrels high in paired trees. But Scarlett had no eyes for the drama overhead. Her pulse was quickened by the organized hubbub on the ground, the sounds of hammering, sawing, and especially by the familiar resiny smell of fresh-cut lumber. Oh, how she missed the lumber mills and lumber-yards. Her palms itched with the yearning to run her hands over the clean wood, to be busy, to be doing something, making a difference, running things—instead of taking tea from dainty cups with washed-out, dainty old ladies.

Scarlett heard barely a word of the descriptive wonders outlined by the young priest who was her escort. She did not even notice the surreptitious admiring looks of the burly laborers who stood back from their work to allow the priest and his companion free passage. She was too preoccupied to listen or notice. What fine straight trees had given up these timbers? It was the best heart pine she’d ever seen. She wondered where the mill was, what kind of saws it had, what kind of power. Oh, if only she was a man! Then she could ask, could go see the mill instead of this church. Scarlett scuffled her feet through a mound of fresh wood shavings and inhaled the tonic of the sharp scent of them.

“I must get back to the school for dinner,” said the priest apologetically.

“Of course, Father, I’m ready to go.” She wasn’t but what else could she say? Scarlett followed him out of the Cathedral and onto the sidewalk.

“Begging your pardon, Father.” The speaker was a huge, red-faced man wearing a red shirt that was heavily whitened by mortar dust. The priest looked diminutive and pale beside him.

“If you could be saying a small blessing on the work, Father? The lintel to the Chapel of the Sacred Heart was set not an hour ago.”

Why, he sounds just like Pa at his most Irish. Scarlett bowed her head for the priest’s blessing, as did the groups of workmen. Her eyes smarted from the tang of the cut pine and the quick tears for her father that she blinked away.

I’ll go see Pa’s brothers, she decided. No matter that they must be about a hundred years old, Pa would want me to go and say hello at least.

She walked with the priest back to the convent, and another placid refusal by the elderly nun when she asked to see the Mother Superior.

Scarlett kept her temper, but her eyes were dangerously bright. “Tell her I’ll be back this afternoon,” she said.

As the tall iron gate swung closed behind her Scarlett heard the sound of church bells from a few blocks away. “Bother!” she said. She was going to be late for dinner.

S
carlett smelled fried chicken as soon as she opened the door of the big pink house. “Take these things,” she said to Pansy, and she got out of her cape and hat and gloves with record speed. She was very hungry.

Eulalie looked at her with huge mournful eyes when she entered the dining room. “Père wants to see you, Scarlett.”

“Can’t it wait until after dinner? I’m starving.”

“He said ‘the minute she comes in.’ ”

Scarlett picked up a steaming hot roll from the bread basket and took an angry bite as she swung on her heel. She finished it while she marched to her grandfather’s room.

The old man frowned at her over the tray that rested on his lap in the big bed. His plate, Scarlett saw, held only mashed potatoes and a mound of soggy-looking bits of carrot.

My grief! No wonder he looks so fierce. There’s not even any butter on the potatoes. Even if he doesn’t have a tooth in his head, they could feed him better than that.

“I do not tolerate a disregard for the schedule of my house,” said the old man.

“I’m sorry, Grandfather.”

“Discipline is what made the Emperor’s armies great; without discipline there is only chaos.”

His voice was deep, strong, fearsome. But Scarlett saw the sharp old bones jutting under his heavy linen nightshirt, and she felt no fear.

“I said I was sorry. May I go now? I’m hungry.”

“Don’t be impertinent, young lady.”

“There’s nothing impertinent about being hungry, Grandfather. Just because you don’t want to eat your dinner, it doesn’t mean nobody else should have any.”

Pierre Robillard pushed angrily at his tray. “Pap!” he growled. “Not fit for pigs.”

Scarlett edged toward the door.

“I have not dismissed you, Miss.”

She felt her stomach growl. The rolls would be cold by now, the chicken might even be gone, with Aunt Eulalie’s appetite being what it was.

“God’s nightgown, Grandfather, I’m not one of your soldiers! And I’m not scared of you like my aunts, either. What are you going to do to me, do you think? Shoot me for desertion? If you want to starve yourself to death, that’s up to you. I’m hungry, and I’m going to go have whatever dinner is left.” She was halfway out the door when a strange choking sound made her turn back. Dear God, have I given him apoplexy? Don’t let him die on me.

Pierre Robillard was laughing.

Scarlett put her hands on her hips and glared at him. He’d scared her half to death.