Rhett Butler's People Read online

  Rhett’s father founded the Ashley River Agricultural Society. After experimenting with rice varieties, Langston selected Soonchurcher Puddy, an African variety that winnowed well and produced a plump grain. When Wade Hampton invited Langston to run for the Carolina legislature, Langston entered the Low Country’s richest, most exclusive men’s club.

  The morning of Rhett’s duel, Langston’s younger son, Julian, drank tea while the ladies took sherry. When Solomon failed to brim her glass, Constance Fisher tapped it impatiently.

  From behind the sheltering love seat, Charlotte Fisher smelled ginger cookies—a warm tingling in the back of her nose. With a sigh, Charlotte set her wants aside. How could she be thinking of ginger cookies when Rosemary’s brother might be wounded or dead? Charlotte Fisher had a thoroughgoing respect for grown-up wisdom—grown-ups were grown-ups, after all—but Charlotte had concluded they were wrong about Rhett Butler.

  “Belle Watling is pretty,” the unpretty Miss Ravanel remarked, “for a rustic.”

  Elizabeth Butler shook her head. “That girl has sorely tried her father’s patience.” When Langston was away, Elizabeth Butler joined the overseer’s family for Sunday prayers. Elizabeth was vaguely comforted by the simple farmhouse where she’d once had her hopes—giddy newlywed hopes—for a happy life. Isaiah Watling’s fierce, unbending Christianity consoled her.

  “The field of honor—it’s a lovely meadow beside the river. The oaks are dripping with Spanish moss. When I married, I dreamed Langston and I might picnic there one day. We would have such fine picnics.” Mrs. Butler dropped her eyes. “How I ramble on; pray forgive me.” She glanced at the tall clock, upon whose serene face a gilt quarter moon was slowly plunging into an enameled sea. She rang Uncle Solomon again.

  Had he wound the clock recently, and if so, had he changed the hands?

  “No, missus.” Solomon licked his lips. “I winds the clock Sundays. You want it winded now?”

  She dismissed him with a dispirited wave. “An apology …” Mrs. Butler said. “No one expects Rhett to marry the girl.”

  “Excellent notion! An apology!” Miss Ravanel applauded.

  “My brother would never apologize!” Rosemary’s protest startled her elders, who had forgotten the little girls. “Shad Watling is a bully and a liar! Rhett would never apologize to Shad Watling.” Though Rosemary’s cheeks flushed, she wouldn’t recant—not one word! When sensible Charlotte squeezed her friend’s ankle, Rosemary shoved her hand away.

  “Rhett never liked Charleston.” Mrs. Butler’s eyes roved. “Rhett said the only difference between alligators and Charlestonians was that alligators showed their teeth before they bit.”

  “Rhett favors his grandfather,” Constance Fisher repeated. “That raven hair, those laughing black eyes.” Her voice traveled back in time. “Mercy, how Louis Valentine could dance.”

  “Why couldn’t that girl have gone away!” Elizabeth Butler cried. “She has connections in Missouri.”

  Miss Ravanel averred there were many bastards in Missouri. Perhaps there were even more bastards in Missouri than in Texas.

  Julian Butler compared his watch with the tall clock and retarded the clock. “We won’t hear the shots. Too distant.”

  His mother gasped.

  “Julian,” Constance Fisher said, “your brother may be a rogue, but you are a dunce.”

  Julian shrugged. “Rhett’s latest escapade has upset our household. All the servants wear long faces. Thinking Cook had prepared these cookies for honored guests”—Julian afforded them a nod—“I complimented her. ‘Oh no, Master Julian. I bakes ’em for Master Rhett. After he done fightin’.”

  Charlotte whispered, “Rosemary, please don’t say any more. We must be perfect possums.” Charlotte added wistfully, “I would so like a ginger cookie.”

  The big clock ticked.

  Julian cleared his throat, “Mrs. Ward, I’m less familiar with Savannah’s first families than I should be. You were a Robillard, I believe?”

  Miss Ravanel remembered some gossip. “Wasn’t some Robillard on the brink of consummating an unfortunate alliance—with a cousin, was it?”

  “Dear Cousin Philippe. My sister Ellen thought Philippe was magnificent.” Eulalie giggled (by now she’d had her third glass of sherry). “I suppose a lion is magnificent—until he eats you.”

  Miss Ravanel recalled details. “Didn’t the Robillards exile Cousin Philippe and marry the girl off to an Irish storekeeper?”

  Eulalie tried to bolster family dignity. “My sister Ellen married a successful businessman. She and Mr.

  Gerald O’Hara have a cotton plantation near Jonesboro. Tara it is called.” She sniffed. “After his family estate in Ireland, I presume.”

  “Jonesboro would be in … Georgia?” Miss Ravanel stifled her yawn.

  “Indeed. Ellen writes that her daughter Scarlett is ‘a Robillard through and through.’”

  “Scarlett? What a curious name. Scarlett O’Hara—those Irish, dear me.”

  Hands clasped behind his back, Julian said, “It’ll be over now.”

  Elizabeth Butler’s voice chimed with false hope. “Rhett and Shad will have made amends and galloped off to Mr. Turner’s tavern.”

  Constance Fisher said, “Julian: If your father has finished his accounts, might he condescend to join us?”

  “Langston Butler’s work is never done,” Julian intoned. “Fourteen thousand acres, three hundred and fifty negroes, sixty horses, including five of the finest Thoroughbreds …”

  “But only two sons,” Constance Fisher snapped. “One of whom may be dying of a bullet wound.”

  Elizabeth Butler put her hand to her mouth. “Rhett is at Mr. Turner’s tavern,” she whispered. “He must be.”

  When Rosemary heard the hoofbeats, she ran to the window, flinging it open wide, so damp air rushed into the house. On tiptoes, the child pushed her torso outside. “It’s Tecumseh!” she cried. “I’d know his gallop anywhere. Oh, listen, Mama! Can’t you hear? Rhett’s in the lane. It is him! It’s Tecumseh!”

  The child bolted from the room, hurtled pell-mell down the broad staircase, past her father’s office, and outside onto the oyster-shell drive, where her brother was reining in his lathered horse. A grinning Uncle Solomon took Tecumseh’s bridle. “I gratified you home, Master Rhett,” Uncle Solomon said. “All us coloreds gratified.”

  The young man slid off his horse and scooped his sister into the air, squeezing her so fiercely, it took her breath. “I’m sorry I frightened you, little one. I wouldn’t have you frightened for the world.”

  “Rhett, you’re hurt!”

  His left sleeve was empty. His arm hung inside his black frock coat.

  “The ball didn’t touch bone. It’s gusty beside the river at sunrise. Watling didn’t allow for gusts.”

  “Oh, Rhett, I was so afraid. What would I do if I lost you?”

  “You haven’t lost me, child. Only the good die young.” He set his sister at arm’s length, as if stamping her forever on his memory. His black eyes were so sad. “Come with me, Rosemary,” he said, and for one exalted instant the child misunderstood. For a few seconds, Rosemary thought she and Rhett would flee this joyless house, that she’d wave farewell from Tecumseh’s back as brother and sister flew away.

  She followed her brother onto the long, empty piazza in front of the house. Rhett put his good arm around his sister’s thin shoulder and turned her so they overlooked their family’s world. On the patchwork of sunlit rectangular rice fields, gangs were spreading marl, chanting as they worked. Though the words were inaudible, the tone was sweet and sorrowing. The Ashley River’s tidal arc outlined Broughton’s main trunk. On that trunk, a horseman galloped toward the east field and Isaiah Watling.

  “Bad news rides the swiftest horse,” Rhett said quietly. After a pause, he added, “I shan’t ever forget how beautiful this is.”

  “Is he … Is Shad Watling…”

  “Yes,” Rhett said.

  “Are y
ou sad?” Rosemary asked. “He was a bully. You needn’t be sad.”

  Rhett smiled. “What a wonder you are.”

  Mrs. Butler and her guests were waiting in the public parlor.

  When she saw her son’s empty sleeve, Elizabeth Butler gasped and her eyes rolled back until the whites showed. Julian helped her to a bench, murmuring, “Dear Mother. Mother, please.”

  Eulalie Ward’s eyes were enormous. “Franklin?” she squeaked.

  “Madam, your Franklin is unscathed except by his own flask. The good doctor has no stomach for this business.”

  Ledger in hand, Langston Butler erupted from his office and strode to the shelves, where he slotted the ledger among its fellows.

  Turning, he glanced at his elder son. “Ah yes, the bad penny.” Langston Butler went to the family Bible and opened it to those pages where Butler births, marriages, and deaths had been recorded since the Bible had been printed in 1607. He extracted a silver penknife from his waistcoat to whittle quick curls from his goose-quill pen. He laid the quill against the glossy walnut stand and when he tipped his nib, he cut so deep, he marred the wood.

  With trembling hands, Langston Butler inspected the Bible record. “The Butlers have boasted patriots, faithful wives, dutiful children, and respectable citizens. But there is a wicked strain in Butler blood, and some herein this Book, my own father among them, have been hangman’s bait.” Langston’s glare at Grandmother Fisher dared her disagreement.

  Langston continued. “Today, we concern ourselves with a disobedient scion, a rebellious and impertinent youth. When his parent sought acceptable conduct, that youth defied him.”

  Elizabeth Butler wept silently. Julian Butler stifled a cough.

  “When, at wit’s end, that parent enrolled the boy in West Point, even their famous disciplinarians could not subdue him. Cadet Butler was expelled and returned to the Low Country, where he proved a dissolute rakehell and impregnated a girl of the lower classes. Did you offer Watling money?”

  “You are the rich planter, sir, not I.”

  “Why did you challenge Watling?”

  “Watling lied about me, sir.”

  Langston brushed it away. “Watling is dead?”

  “He is emptied of mischief.”

  With deliberate strokes, Langston Butler struck his son’s name from the Bible. He capped the inkwell, wiped the nib, and laid the pen down.

  Wordlessly, Langston Butler herded his family and friends back through the broad doors into the family quarters. Julian took Rosemary’s hand before she could elude him.

  Langston Butler closed the walnut doors and set his back against them. The air shimmered between father and son. “As you have no further business with the Butler family, sir, you may depart.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Beloved Brother Rhett …”

  In the years to come, little Rosemary wrote her brother faithfully. She told him about her piebald pony, Jack, who had the pleasantest manners. Rosemary rode Jack everywhere. “Mother says I am becoming a Wild Indian. Have you met any Wild Indians?

  “When I ask him to jump,” Rosemary wrote, “Jack swivels his head and rolls his eyes and lays his ears flat. I believe Jack is insulted!”

  When a water moccasin struck Jack, Rosemary wrote how she and Hercules sat up through the night with her dying pony. Though Rosemary’s hand was steady, this letter was spotted with tearstains.

  Rosemary had returned to the Fishers’ and wrote about that household.

  Charlotte doesn’t think ill of anyone. I don’t think her brother, Jamie, intends to be cruel, but his friends are so clever and reckless, Jamie must act as they do. One morning, he came home while Charlotte and I were at breakfast. Jamie’s clothes were filthy! He stumbled and he smelled very bad! When Charlotte reproved

  him, Jamie called Charlotte “an interfering hussy.” Charlotte set her lip and refused to speak to Jamie. For days and days, Jamie pretended nothing was wrong, but in the end he apologized! Charlotte is exactly like Grandmother Fisher—the best of friends but stubborn to a fault!

  Jamie is gentler than he wants us to think! When he isn’t with his friends, he tells us amusing stories. Some are not true! Jamie loves horses and is the best rider I have ever seen! Hercules lets Jamie ride Gero, though Father would be furious if he knew! Have I told you about Gero? Hercules says Gero is the fastest Thoroughbred in the Low Country.

  Jamie’s friends are Andrew Ravanel, Henry Kershaw, and Edgar Puryear. Weren’t they your friends, too? Jamie says John Haynes is a “young stick,” but he daren’t criticize John Haynes in Grandmother Fisher’s hearing! John Haynes asks if I’ve heard from you and I am sorry I must tell him I haven’t!

  If I were older I would join you and we could travel even to Egypt. I should very much like to see the pyramids. Have you seen the pyramids?

  In much the same way that Rosemary knew Jesus loved little children, she knew Abolitionists were wicked and Yankees hated and feared Southerners, even children like herself. From more personal experience, Rosemary knew grown-ups argued fiercely about politics and that friendships were made or discarded depending on what other grown-ups were doing far away in the United States Congress.

  When Rosemary was ten, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850 and Nullifiers and Unionists became friendly for a time. Langston Butler, who hadn’t spoken to Cathecarte Puryear since he removed Rhett from Cathecarte’s tutelage, nodded to Puryear on Queen Street.

  When Mrs. Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was published, all Charleston deplored the wicked book. Grandmother Fisher said it was too simple for Rosemary and Charlotte.

  “How can it be too simple for children?” Rosemary asked, desperate to read the book everybody was talking about.

  “Simple in the sense of being simpleminded,” Grandmother Fisher grumbled.

  In her next letter, Rosemary asked if Rhett had read Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

  This brief political tranquillity ended when Rosemary was fourteen and Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the West, slave owners and abolitionists were murdering one another.

  At about this time, Rosemary began paying rather more attention to Charleston’s eligible bachelors. “Edgar Allan Puryear claimed Andrew Ravanel cheated at cards, so Andrew challenged him,” Rosemary wrote. “Everybody thought they’d fight, but Edgar apologized, so now people suspect Edgar is a coward. Jamie Fisher calls Andrew a ‘beautiful’ horseman. Do you think a man can be beautiful?

  “Henry Kershaw caned a free colored tailor in front of his shop after the tailor asked payment of an overdue bill. The man died of his injuries. (Father joked that the tailor got his due!)”

  Rosemary described Congress Haynes’s funeral, when mourners blocked Meeting Street from Queen Street to White Point. “John Haynes asked about you again. How I wish I had some news of you, dear brother!

  “Do you remember visiting me when you first came back from West Point? I was such a child and you seemed so very tall! Do you remember going sailing?

  “Last Saturday, Gero beat Mr. Canby’s Planet, and Colonel Ravanel’s Chapultapec. Hercules took credit and tried to order a basket of champagne to celebrate his victory. Hercules said he wanted to ‘treat all the white gentlemen.’ What a notion! Father sent Hercules back to Broughton to ‘refresh his manners.’”

  Rosemary assured Rhett: “Mother loves you, Rhett! I know she does!” This was conjecture; after her elder son was banished, Elizabeth Butler burst into tears on the rare occasions Rhett’s name was mentioned.

  Abolitionist murders in distant Kansas disrupted long-standing Charleston connections. Cousins quit speaking to cousins. Charlestonians once deemed extreme were lauded as visionaries. Grandmother Fisher kept Langston Butler’s friends from expelling the Unionist Cathecarte Puryear from the St. Cecilia Society. In response, Langston Butler withdrew his fifteen-year-old daughter from the Fisher home again.

  Thereafter, Rosemary saw Charlotte and Jamie Fisher only at social gatherings. To Rhett, she w
rote, “Jamie and Andrew Ravanel’s sister, Juliet, have become bosom friends. She and Jamie hone their tongues on one another, sharpening them for their victims.”

  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.

  “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.