Scarlett (9 page)

There would be chaperones enough at Pitty’s.

*   *   *

India answered her knock. She looked at Scarlett’s fashionable fur-trimmed mourning costume, and a tight, satisfied smile moved her lips.

Smile all you like, you old crow, thought Scarlett. India’s mourning gown was unrelieved dull black crape, without so much as a button to decorate it. “I’ve come to see how Ashley is,” she said.

“You’re not welcome here,” India said. She began to close the door.

Scarlett pushed against it. “India Wilkes, don’t you dare slam that door in my face. I made a promise to Melly, and I’ll keep it if I have to kill you to do it.”

India answered by putting her shoulder to the door and resisting the pressure of Scarlett’s two hands. The undignified struggle lasted for only a few seconds. Then Scarlett heard Ashley’s voice.

“Is that Scarlett, India? I’d like to talk with her.”

The door swung open, and Scarlett marched in, noting with pleasure that India’s face was mottled with red splotches of anger.

Ashley came forward into the hallway to greet her, and Scarlett’s brisk steps faltered. He looked desperately ill. Dark circles ringed his pale eyes, and deep lines ran from his nostrils to his chin. His clothes looked too big for him; his coat hung from his sagging frame like broken wings on a black bird.

Scarlett’s heart turned over. She no longer loved Ashley the way she had for all those years, but he was still part of her life. There were so many shared memories, over so much time. She couldn’t bear to see him in such pain. “Dear Ashley,” she said gently, “come and sit down. You look tired.”

They sat on a settee in Aunt Pitty’s small, fussy, cluttered parlor for more than an hour. Scarlett spoke seldom. She listened while Ashley talked, repeating and interrupting himself in a confused zig-zag of memories. He recounted stories of his dead wife’s kindness, unselfishness, nobility, her love for Scarlett, for Beau, and for him. His voice was low and without expression, bleached by grief and hopelessness. His hand groped blindly for Scarlett’s, and he grasped it with such despairing strength that her bones rubbed together painfully. She compressed her lips and let him hold on to her.

India stood in the arched doorway, a dark, still spectator.

Finally Ashley interrupted himself and turned his head from side to side like a man blinded and lost. “Scarlett, I can’t go on without her,” he groaned. “I can’t.”

Scarlett pulled her hand away. She had to break through the shell of despair that bound him, or it would kill him, she was sure. She stood and leaned down over him. “Listen to me, Ashley Wilkes,” she said. “I’ve been listening to you pick over your sorrows all this time, and now you listen to mine. Do you think you’re the only person who loved Melly and depended on her? I did, more than I knew, more than anybody knew. I expect a lot of other people did, too. But we’re not going to curl up and die for it. That’s what you’re doing. And I’m ashamed of you.

“Melly is, too, if she’s looking down from heaven. Do you have any idea what she went through to have Beau? Well, I know what she suffered, and I’m telling you it would have killed the strongest man God ever made. Now you’re all he’s got. Is that what you want Melly to see? That her boy is all alone, practically an orphan, because his Pa feels too sorry for himself to care about him? Do you want to break her heart, Ashley Wilkes? Because that’s what you’re doing.” She caught his chin in her hand and forced him to look at her.

“You pull yourself together, do you hear me, Ashley? You march yourself out to the kitchen and tell the cook to fix you a hot meal. And you eat it. If it makes you throw up, eat another one. And you find your boy and take him in your arms and tell him not to be scared, that he has a father to take care of him. Then do it. Think about somebody besides yourself.”

Scarlett wiped her hand on her skirt as if it were soiled by Ashley’s grip. Then she walked from the room, pushing India out of the way.

As she opened the door to the porch, she could hear India: “My poor, darling Ashley. Don’t pay any attention to the horrible things Scarlett said. She’s a monster.”

Scarlett stopped, turned. She withdrew a calling card from her purse and dropped it on a table. “I’m leaving my card for you, Aunt Pitty,” she shouted, “since you’re afraid to see me in person.”

She slammed the door behind her.

“Just drive, Elias,” she told her coachman. “Anywhere at all.” She couldn’t stand to stay in that house one single minute more. What was she going to do? Had she gotten through to Ashley? She’d been so mean—well, she had to be, he was being drowned in sympathy and pity—but had it done any good? Ashley adored his son, maybe he’d pull himself together for Beau’s sake. “Maybe” wasn’t good enough. He had to. She had to make him do it.

“Take me to Mr. Henry Hamilton’s law office,” she told Elias.

“Uncle Henry” was terrifying to most women, but not to Scarlett. She could understand that growing up in the same house with Aunt Pittypat had made him a misogynist. And she knew he rather liked her. He said she wasn’t as silly as most women. He was her lawyer and knew how shrewd she was in her business dealings.

When she walked into his office without waiting to be announced, he put down the letter he was reading and chuckled. “Do come in, Scarlett,” he said, rising to his feet. “Are you in a hurry to sue somebody?”

She paced forward and back, ignoring the chair beside his desk. “I’d like to shoot somebody,” she said, “but I don’t know that it would help. Isn’t it true that when Charles died, he left me all his property?”

“You know it is. Stop that fidgeting and sit down. He left the warehouses near the depot that the Yankees burned. And he left some farmland outside of town that will be in town before too long, the way Atlanta has been growing.”

Scarlett perched on the edge of the chair, her eyes fixed on his. “And half of Aunt Pitty’s house on Peachtree Street,” she said distinctly. “Didn’t he leave me that, too?”

“My God, Scarlett, don’t tell me you want to move in there.”

“Of course not. But I want Ashley out of there. India and Aunt Pitty are going to sympathize him into his grave. He can go back to his own house. I’ll find him a housekeeper.”

Henry Hamilton looked at her with expressionless probing eyes. “Are you sure that’s why you want him back in his own house, because he’s suffering from too much sympathy?”

Scarlett bridled. “God’s nightgown, Uncle Henry!” she said. “Are you turning into a scandal monger in your old age?”

“Don’t show your claws to me, young lady. Settle back in that chair and listen to some hard truths. You’ve got maybe the best business head I ever met, but otherwise you’re about as dimwitted as the village idiot.”

Scarlett scowled, but she did as she was told.

“Now, about Ashley’s house,” said the old lawyer slowly, “it’s already been sold. I drew up the papers yesterday.” He held up his hand to stop Scarlett before she could speak. “I advised him to move into Pitty’s and sell it. Not because of the pain of associations and memories in the house, and not because I was concerned about who was going to take care of him and the boy, although both are valid considerations. I advised him to move because he needed the money from the sale to keep his lumber business from going under.”

“What do you mean? Ashley doesn’t know tootle about making money, but he can’t possibly go under. Builders always need lumber.”

“If they’re building. Just you get down off your high horse for a minute and listen, Scarlett. I know you’re not interested in anything that happens in the world unless it concerns you, but there was a big financial scandal in New York a couple or three weeks ago. A speculator named Jay Cooke miscalculated, and he crashed. He took his railroad down with him, an outfit called the Northern Pacific. He took a bunch of other speculators with him, too, fellows who were in on his railroad deal and some of his other deals. When they went with him, they took down a lot of other deals they were in on, outside of Cooke’s. Then the fellows who were in on their deals went down, tumbling still more deals and more fellows. Just like a house of cards. In New York they’re calling it ‘the Panic.’ It’s already spreading. I expect it’ll run through the whole country before it’s done.”

Scarlett felt a stab of terror. “What about my store?” she cried. “And my money? Are the banks safe?”

“The one you bank in is. I’ve got my money there, too, so I made sure. Fact is, Atlanta’s not likely to get hurt much. We’re not big enough yet for any big deals, and it’s the big ones that are crumbling. But business is at a standstill everywhere. People are afraid to invest in anything. That means building, too. And if nobody’s building, nobody needs lumber.”

Scarlett frowned. “So Ashley won’t be making any money from the sawmills. I can see that. But if nobody’s investing, why did his house sell so fast? Seems to me, if there’s a panic, real estate prices should be the first thing to fall.”

Uncle Henry grinned. “Like a stone. You’re a smart one, Scarlett. That’s why I told Ashley to sell while he could. Atlanta hasn’t felt the Panic yet, but it’ll get here soon. We’ve been booming for the past eight years—hell, there are more than twenty thousand people living here now—but you can’t boom without bucks.” He laughed mightily at his own wit.

Scarlett laughed with him, although she didn’t think there was anything funny about economic collapse. She knew men like to be appreciated.

Uncle Henry’s laughter stopped abruptly, like water turned off at a faucet. “So. Now Ashley’s with his sister and his aunt, for good and proper reasons and according to my advice. And that doesn’t suit you.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t suit at all. He looks awful, and they’re making him worse. He’s like a dead man walking. I gave him a good talking-to; tried to snap him out of the state he’s in by hollering at him. But I don’t know if it did any good. I know it won’t stick even if it did. Not as long as he’s in that house.”

She looked at Uncle Henry’s skeptical expression. Anger reddened her face. “I don’t care what you heard or what you think, Uncle Henry. I’m not after Ashley. I made a deathbed promise to Melanie that I’d take care of him and Beau. I wish to God I hadn’t, but I did.”

Her outburst made Henry uncomfortable. He didn’t like emotion, especially in women. “If you start crying, Scarlett, I’ll have you put out.”

“I’m not going to cry. I’m mad. I’ve got to do something, and you’re no help.”

Henry Hamilton leaned back in his chair. He touched his fingertips together, resting his arms on his ample stomach. It was his lawyerly look, almost judicial.

“You’re the last person who can help Ashley right now, Scarlett. I told you I was going to deliver some hard truths, and that’s one of them. Right or wrong—and I don’t care to know which—there was a lot of speculation about you and Ashley at one time. Miss Melly stood up for you, and most people followed her lead—for love of her, mind you, not because they were especially fond of you.

“India thought the worst and said it. She put together her own little band of believers. It wasn’t a pretty situation, but folks accommodated themselves, like they always do. Things could have rocked on like that forever, even after Melanie’s death. Nobody really likes disruption and changes. But you couldn’t leave well enough alone. Oh, no. You had to go make a spectacle of yourself at Melanie’s very graveside. Throwing your arms around her husband, hauling him away from his dead wife, who a lot of people thought close to a saint.”

He held up one hand. “I know what you’re about to say, so don’t bother to say it, Scarlett.” His fingertips touched again. “Ashley was about to throw himself in the grave, maybe break his neck. I was there. I saw it. That’s not the point. For such a smart girl, you don’t understand the world at all.

“If Ashley had pitched himself onto the coffin, everybody would have called it ‘touching.’ If he killed himself doing it, they would have been real sorry, but there are rules for handling sorrow. Society needs rules, Scarlett, to hold itself together. What you did broke all the rules. You made a scene in public. You laid hands on a man who wasn’t your husband. In public. You raised a ruckus that interrupted a burial, a ceremony that everybody knows the rules to. You broke up the last rites of a saint.

“There’s not a lady in this town that isn’t lined up on India’s side right now. That means against you. You don’t have a friend to your name, Scarlett. And if you have anything at all to do with Ashley, you’ll fix it so that he’s just as outcast as you.

“The ladies are against you. God help you, Scarlett, because I can’t. When Christian ladies turn on you, you’d better not hope for Christian charity or forgiveness. It’s not in them. They won’t allow it in anybody else, either, especially not their menfolk. They own their men, body and soul. That’s why I’ve always kept my distance from the misnamed ‘gentle sex.’

“I wish you well, Scarlett. You know I’ve always liked you. That’s about all I can offer, good wishes. You’ve made a mess of things, and I don’t know how you can ever put it right.”

The old lawyer stood up. “Leave Ashley where he is. Some sweet-talking little lady will come along one of these days and snap him up. Then she’ll take care of him. You leave Pittypat’s house the way it is, including your half. And don’t stop sending money through me to pay the bills for its upkeep, the way you’ve always done. That’ll satisfy your promise to Melanie.

“Come on. I’ll escort you to your carriage.”