The ship’s captain walked down the gangplank, adjusting the set of his gold epauletted jacket. Don’t make them hurry, Scarlett wanted to shout. Stay, stay just a little longer. It’s my last chance. I’ll never see him again. Let me store up the sight of him.
He must have just had his hair cut, there’s the tiniest pale line above his ears. Is that more gray at the temples? It looks so elegant, the silver streaking his crow-black hair. I remember how it felt under my fingers, crisp and shockingly soft at the same time. And the muscles in his shoulders and his arms, sliding so smoothly under the skin, stretching the skin when they hardened. I want—
The ship’s whistle shrieked loudly. Scarlett jumped. She could hear rapid footsteps, the rumble of the gangplank, but she kept her eyes fixed on Rhett. He was smiling, looking over there to her right, looking up. She could see his dark eyes and slashing brows and impeccably groomed mustache. His entire strong, masculine, unforgettable pirate’s face. “My beloved,” she whispered, “my love.”
Rhett bowed once again. The ship was moving away from the dock. He put his hat on and turned away. His thumb tilted the hat to the back of his head.
Don’t go, cried Scarlett’s heart.
Rhett glanced over his shoulder as if there had been a sound. His eyes met hers, and surprise stiffened his lithe body. For a long, immeasurable moment the two of them looked at each other while the space between them widened. Then blandness smoothed Rhett’s face as he touched two fingers to his hat brim in salute. Scarlett lifted her hand.
He was still standing there on the dock when the ship turned into the channel to the sea. When Scarlett could see him no longer, she sank numbly into a deck chair.
“Don’t be silly, Bridie, the steward will sit right outside the door. He’ll come get us if Cat so much as turns over. There’s no reason for you not to come to the dining saloon. You can’t have your dinner in here every night.”
“There’s reason enough for me, Scarlett. I don’t feel easy among fancy gentlemen and ladies, pretending to be one of them.”
“You’re just as good as they are, I told you that.”
“And I heard you say it, Scarlett, but you don’t hear me. I prefer to have me meal in here with all the silver hats on the dishes and my manners my own business. ’Tis soon enough I’ll have to go where the lady I’m maiding tells me to go and do what I’m told to do. It’s certain that having a grand meal in private comfort won’t be one of my instructions. I’ll take it now while I can.”
Scarlett had to agree with Bridie. But she couldn’t possibly have dinner in the suite herself. Not tonight. She had to find out who those women were and why they were with Rhett, or she’d go mad.
They were English, she learned as soon as she entered the dining saloon. The distinctive accent was dominating the captain’s table.
Scarlett told the steward that she would like to change her seating to the small table near the wall. The table near the wall was also near the captain’s table.
There were fourteen at his table: a dozen English passengers, the captain, and his first officer. Scarlett had a keen ear and could tell almost at once that the passengers’ accents were different from the ship’s officers, although to her they were all English and therefore to be despised by anyone with a drop of Irish blood.
They were talking about Charleston. Scarlett gathered that they didn’t think much of it. “My dears,” one of the women trumpeted, “I’ve never seen anything as dreary in my life. How my darling Mama could have told me that it was the only civilized place in America! It simply makes me worry that she’s gone dotty without our noticing.”
“Now, Sarah,” said the man to her left, “you do have to take that war of theirs into consideration. I found the men to be very decent. Down to their last shilling, I’m sure, but never a mention, and the liquor was first rate. Single malt at the club bar.”
“Geoffrey, my love, you’d think the Sahara was civilized if there was a club with drinkable whiskey. Heaven only knows it couldn’t be any hotter. Beastly climate.”
There was a chorus of agreement.
“On the other hand,” said a youthful female voice, “that terribly attractive Butler man said the winters are quite delightful. He invited us back.”
“I’m sure he invited you back, Felicity,” said an older woman. “You behaved disgracefully.”
“Frances, I did no such thing,” protested Felicity. “I was only having some fun for the first time on this dreary trip. I cannot credit why Papa sent me to America. It’s a wretched place.”
A man laughed. “He sent you, sister dear, to get you out of the clutches of that fortune hunter.”
“But he was so attractive. I don’t see any point in having a fortune if you have to fend off every attractive man in England simply because he’s not rich.”
“At least you’re supposed to fend them off, Felicity,” said a girl. “That’s easy enough to do. Think of our poor brother. Roger’s supposed to draw American heiresses like flies, and marry a fortune to refill the family coffers.” Roger groaned and everyone laughed.
Talk about Rhett, Scarlett implored silently.
“There’s simply no market for Honourables,” Roger said. “I can’t get it through Papa’s head. Heiresses want tiaras.”
The older woman they called Frances said that she thought they were all disgraceful and that she couldn’t understand young people today. “When I was a gel—” she began.
Felicity giggled. “Frances, dear, when you were a ‘gel’ there were no young people. Your generation were born forty years old and disapproving of everything.”
“Your impertinence is intolerable, Felicity. I shall speak to your father.”
A brief silence fell. Why on earth doesn’t that Felicity person say something more about Rhett? Scarlett thought.
It was Roger who brought up the name. Butler, he said, offered some good shooting if he came back in the autumn. Seems he had rice fields gone to grass and the ducks practically landed on the barrel of your gun.
Scarlett tore a roll into fragments. Who gave two cents about ducks? The other Englishmen did, it seemed. They talked about shooting throughout the main course of dinner. She was thinking she’d have done better to stay with Bridie when her ears picked up a low-toned private conversation between Felicity and her sister, whose name turned out to be Marjorie. Both of them thought Rhett one of the most intriguing men they’d ever met. Scarlett listened with mixed feelings of curiosity and pride.
“A shame he’s so devoted to his wife,” Marjorie said and Scarlett’s heart sank.
“Such a colorless little thing, too,” Felicity said. Scarlett felt a little bit better.
“Out and out rebound, I heard. Didn’t anyone tell you? He was married before, to an absolute tearing beauty. She ran off with another man and left Rhett Butler flat. He’s never gotten over it.”
“Gracious, Marjorie, can you imagine what the other man must be like if she’d leave the Butler man for him?”
Scarlett smiled to herself. She was enormously gratified to know that gossip had her leaving Rhett and not the other way around.
She felt much better than when she’d sat down. She might even have some dessert.
The following day the English discovered Scarlett. The three young people agreed that she was a superbly romantic figure, a mysterious young widow. “Damned nice looking, too,” Roger added. His sisters told him he must be going blind. With her pale skin and dark hair and those green eyes, she was fantastically beautiful. The only thing she needed was some decent clothes and she’d turn heads wherever she went. They decided they’d “take her up.” Marjorie made the approach by admiring Cat when Scarlett had her on deck for an airing.
Scarlett was more than willing to be “taken up.” She wanted to hear every detail of every hour they’d spent in Charleston. It wasn’t difficult for her to invent a tragic story of her marriage and bereavement that satisfied all their cravings for melodrama. Roger fell in love wi
th her within the first hour.
Scarlett had been taught by her mother that genteel discretion about family matters was one of the hallmarks of a lady. Felicity and Marjorie Cowperthwaite shocked her with their casual unveiling of family skeletons. Their mother, they said, was a pretty and clever woman who had trapped their father into marriage. She managed to be run down by his horse when he was out riding. “Poor Papa is so dim,” Marjorie laughed, “that he thought he’d probably ruined her because her frock was torn and he saw her bare breasts. We’re certain that she tore it herself before she ever left the vicarage. She married him like a shot before he could puzzle out what she was up to.”
To add to Scarlett’s confusion, Felicity and Marjorie were ladies. Not simply “ladies” as opposed to “women.” They were Lady Felicity and Lady Marjorie and their “dim papa” was an earl.
Frances Sturbridge, their disapproving chaperone, was also a “Lady,” they explained, but she was Lady Sturbridge, not Lady Frances, because she wasn’t born a “Lady” and she’d married a man who was “only a baronet.”
“Whereas I could marry one of the footmen and Marjorie could run off with the boot boy, and we’d still be Lady Felicity and Lady Marjorie in the foul sinks of Bristol where our husbands robbed poor boxes to support us.”
Scarlett could only laugh. “It’s too complicated for me,” she admitted.
“Oh, but my dear, it can be ever so much more complicated than our boring little family. When you get into widows and horrid little viscounts and third son’s wives and so on, it’s like a labyrinth. Mama has to hire advice every time she gives a dinner or she’d be guaranteed to insult someone fearfully important. You simply must not seat the daughter of an earl’s younger son, like Roger, below somebody like poor Frances. It’s all too foolish for words.”
The Cowperthwaite Ladies were more than a little giddy and rattlebrained, and Roger seemed to have inherited some of Papa’s dimness, but they were a cheerful and warmhearted trio who genuinely liked Scarlett. They made the trip fun for her, and she was sorry when they left the ship at Liverpool.
Now she had almost two full days before she got to Galway, and she wouldn’t be able to delay any longer thinking about the meeting with Rhett in Charleston, that was really no meeting at all.
Had he felt the same shock of recognition she had when their eyes met? It was, for her, as if the rest of the world disappeared and they were alone in some place and time separate from everything and everyone that existed. It wasn’t possible that she could feel so bound to him by a look and that he would not feel the same way. Was it?
She worried and relived the moment until she began to think she’d dreamed it or even imagined it.
When the Fleece entered Galway Bay she was able to store the memory with her other prized memories of Rhett. Ballyhara was waiting, and harvest time was near.
But first she had to smile and whisk her trunks past the customs inspectors. Colum was expecting the weapons.
It was hard to remember that the English were all such bad people when the Cowperthwaites were so charming.
71
Colum was waiting at the end of the gangplank when Scarlett left The Golden Fleece. She hadn’t expected him, she’d known only that someone would meet her and take care of her trunks. At the sight of his stocky figure in worn black clericals and smiling Irish face, Scarlett felt that she’d come home. Her luggage went past customs without any questions other than, “And how are things in America?” to which she answered, “Awful hot,” and, “How old is that grand beautiful baby, then?” to which Scarlett replied proudly “Three months shy of a year, and already trying to walk.”
It took nearly an hour to drive the short distance from the port to the train station. Scarlett had never seen such traffic snarls, not even at Five Points.
It was because of the Galway Races, said Colum. Before Scarlett could remember what had happened to her the previous year in Galway, he quickly added details. Steeplechase and flat racing, five days’ worth every July. It meant that the militia and constabulary were too busy in the city to be wasting time idling around the docks. It also meant that there was not a hotel room to be had at any price. They’d be taking the afternoon train to Ballinasloe and spending the night there. Scarlett wished there was a train all the way to Mullingar. She wanted to get home.
“How are the fields, Colum? Is the wheat nearly ripe? Is the hay cut yet? Has there been plenty of sun? And what about the peat that was cut? Was there enough? Did it dry out like it was supposed to? Is it good? Does it burn hot?”
“Wait and see, Scarlett darling. You’ll be pleased with your Ballyhara, I’m certain of it.”
Scarlett was much more than pleased. She was overcome. The townspeople had erected arches covered with fresh greenery and gold ribbon over her route through Ballyhara town. They stood outside the arches waving handkerchiefs and hats, cheering her return. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she cried over and over, with tears brimming from her eyes.
At the Big House Mrs. Fitzpatrick and the three ill-assorted maids and the four dairymaids and the stablemen were lined up to greet her. Scarlett could barely keep herself from hugging Mrs. Fitz, but she obeyed the housekeeper’s rules and maintained her dignity. Cat was bound by no rules. She laughed and held out her arms to Mrs. Fitzpatrick and was immediately caught up in an emotion-ridden embrace.
Less than an hour later Scarlett was dressed in her Galway peasant clothes striding quickly over her fields, Cat in her arms. It felt so good to be moving, stretching her legs. There’d been too many hours, days, weeks of sitting. On trains, and ships, in offices and armchairs. Now she wanted to walk, ride, bend, reach, run, dance. She was The O’Hara, home again, and the sun was warm between gentle, cooling, swiftly passing Irish rains.
Fragrant mounds of golden hay stood in field cocks seven feet tall on the meadows. Scarlett made a cave in one and crawled inside it with Cat to play house. Cat shrieked with delight when she pulled part of the “roof” down on them. And then when the dust made her sneeze. She picked off dried blossoms and put them in her mouth. Her expression of disgust when she spat them out made Scarlett laugh. Scarlett’s laughter made Cat frown. Which made Scarlett laugh all the more. “Better get used to being laughed at, Miss Cat O’Hara,” she said, “because you’re a wonderfully silly little girl and you make your Momma very, very happy, and when people are happy they laugh a lot.”
Scarlett took Cat back to the house when she started yawning. “Pick the hay out of her hair while she naps,” she told Peggy Quinn. “I’ll be back in time to give her supper and a bath.” She interrupted the slow, chewing contemplation of one of the plow horses in the stable to ride him, bareback and astride, over Ballyhara in the lingering, slowly dimming twilight. The wheat fields were richly yellow, even in the blue-hued light. There would be a bounteous harvest. Scarlett rode home, content. Ballyhara would probably never deliver the kind of profit she’d earned from building and selling cheap houses, but there were satisfactions beyond earning money. The land of the O’Haras was fruitful again; she had brought it back, at least in part, and next year there’d be more acres tilled; the year after, still more.
“It’s so good to be back,” Scarlett said to Kathleen next morning. “I have about a million messages from everybody in Savannah.” She settled herself happily beside the hearth and put Cat down to explore the floor. Before long the heads began to appear above the half door, everyone eager to hear about America and Bridie and all the rest.
At the Angelus the women hurried back down the boreen to the village, and the O’Hara men came in from the fields for their dinner.
Everyone except Seamus, and, of course, Sean who’d always taken his meals in the small cottage with Old Katie Scarlett O’Hara. Scarlett didn’t notice at the time. She was too busy greeting Thomas and Patrick and Timothy and persuading Cat to give up the big spoon she was trying to eat.
It was only after the men had gone back to their work that Kathlee
n told her how much things had changed while she was away.
“It’s sorry I am to say it, Scarlett, but Seamus took it hard that you didn’t stay for his wedding.”
“I wish I could have, but I couldn’t. He must have known that. I had business in America.”
“I’ve a feeling it’s more Pegeen who bears the bad will. Did you not remark that she wasn’t in the visitors this morning?”
The truth was, Scarlett admitted, that she hadn’t noticed at all. She’d only met Pegeen once, she didn’t really know her. What was she like? Kathleen chose her words carefully. Pegeen was a dutiful woman, she said, who kept a clean house and set a good table and saw to every comfort for Seamus and Sean in the small cottage. It would be a kindness to the whole family if Scarlett would go to call on her and admire the home she was making. She was that tender of her dignity that she was waiting to be visited before she’d do any visiting herself.
“My grief,” Scarlett said, “how silly. I’ll have to wake Cat up from her nap.”
“Leave her, I’ll keep watch while I do the mending. It’s better I don’t go with you.”
So Kathleen didn’t much like her cousin’s new wife, thought Scarlett, that was interesting. And Pegeen was keeping house separately instead of going in with Kathleen in the larger cottage, at least for dinner. Tender of her dignity indeed! What a waste of energy to fix two meals instead of one. She had an idea she wasn’t likely to take to Pegeen, but she made up her mind to be nice. It couldn’t be easy coming into a family that had so many shared years, and she knew all too well what it felt like to be the outsider.
Pegeen made it hard for Scarlett to stay sympathetic. Seamus’ wife had a prickly disposition. And she looks like she’s been drinking vinegar, Scarlett thought. Pegeen poured out tea that had been stewed so long it was almost undrinkable. Wants me to know I kept her waiting, I reckon. “I wish I’d been here for the wedding,” said Scarlett bravely. Might as well take the bull by the horns. “I’ve brought best wishes from all the O’Haras in America to add to mine. I hope you and Seamus will be very happy.” She was pleased with herself. Gracefully said, she thought.