Gone With the Wind (86 page)

“Scarlett, how can you say such things? Your poor mother must be turning in her grave at the very thought of charging money for the hospitality of Tara! Of course, Mrs. Elsing was simply forced to it because, while she took in fine sewing and Fanny painted china and Hugh made a little money peddling firewood, they couldn’t make ends meet. Imagine darling Hugh forced to peddle wood! And he all set to be a fine lawyer! I could just cry at the things our boys are reduced to!”

Scarlett thought of the rows of cotton beneath the glaring coppery sky at Tara and how her back had ached as she bent over them. She remembered the feel of plow handles between her inexperienced, blistered palms and she felt that Hugh Elsing was deserving of no special sympathy. What an innocent old fool Pitty was and, despite the ruin all around her, how sheltered!

“If he doesn’t like peddling, why doesn’t He practice law? Or isn’t there any law practice left in Atlanta?”

“Oh dear, yes! There’s plenty of law practice. Practically everybody is suing everybody else these days. With everything burned down and boundary lines wiped out, no one knows just where their land begins or ends. But you can’t get any pay for suing because nobody has any money. So Hugh sticks to his peddling. … Oh, I almost forgot! Did I write you? Fanny Elsing is getting married tomorrow night and, of course, you must attend. Mrs. Elsing will be only too pleased to have you when she knows you’re in town. I do hope you have some other frock besides that one. Not that it isn’t a very sweet frock, darling, but—well, it does look a bit worn. Oh, you have a pretty frock? I’m so glad because it’s going to be the first real wedding we’ve had in Atlanta since before the town fell. Cake and wine and dancing afterward, though I don’t know how the Elsings can afford it, they are so poor.”

“Who is Fanny marrying? I thought after Dallas McLure was killed at Gettysburg—”

“Darling, you mustn’t criticize Fanny. Everybody isn’t as loyal to the dead as you are to poor Charlie. Let me see. What is his name? I can never remember names—Tom somebody. I knew his mother well, we went to La-Grange Female Institute together. She was a Tomlinson from LaGrange and her mother was—let me see. … Perkins? Parkins? Parkinson! That’s it. From Sparta. A very good family but just the same—well, I know I shouldn’t say it but I don’t see how Fanny can bring herself to marry him!”

“Does he drink or—”

“Dear, no! His character is perfect but, you see, he was wounded low down, by a bursting shell and it did something to his legs—makes them—makes them, well, I hate to use the word but it makes him spraddle. It gives him a very vulgar appearance when he walks—well, it doesn’t look very pretty. I don’t see why she’s marrying him.”

“Girls have to marry someone.”

“Indeed, they do not,” said Pitty, ruffling. “I never had to.”

“Now, darling, I didn’t mean you! Everybody knows how popular you were and still are! Why, old Judge Carlton used to throw sheep’s eyes at you till I—”

“Oh, Scarlett, hush! That old fool!” giggled Pitty, good humor restored. “But, after all, Fanny was so popular she could have made a better match and I don’t believe she loves this Tom what’s-his-name. I don’t believe she’s ever gotten over Dallas McLure getting killed, but she’s not like you, darling. You’ve remained so faithful to dear Charlie, though you could have married dozens of times. Melly and I have often said how loyal you were to his memory when everyone else said you were just a heartless coquette.”

Scarlett passed over this tactless confidence and skillfully led Pitty from one friend to another but all the while she was in a fever of impatience to bring the conversation around to Rhett. It would never do for her to ask outright about him, so soon after arriving. It might start the old lady’s mind to working on channels better left untouched. There would be time enough for Pitty’s suspicions to be aroused if Rhett refused to marry her.

Aunt Pitty prattled on happily, pleased as a child at having an audience. Things in Atlanta were in a dreadful pass, she said, due to the vile doings of the Republicans. There was no end to their goings on and the worst thing was the way they were putting ideas in the poor darkies’ heads.

“My dear, they want to let the darkies vote! Did you ever hear of anything more silly? Though—I don’t know—now that I think about it, Uncle Peter has much more sense than any Republican I ever saw and much better manners but, of course, Uncle Peter is far too well bred to want to vote. But the very notion has upset the darkies till they’re right addled. And some of them are so insolent. Your life isn’t safe on the streets after dark and even in the broad daylight they push ladies off the sidewalks into the mud. And if any gentleman dares to protest, they arrest him and— My dear, did I tell you that Captain Butler was in jail?”

“Rhett Butler?”

Even with this startling news, Scarlett was grateful that Aunt Pitty had saved her the necessity of bringing his name into the conversation herself.

“Yes, indeed!” Excitement colored Pitty’s cheeks pink and she sat upright. “He’s in jail this very minute for killing a negro and they may hang him! Imagine Captain Butler hanging!”

For a moment, the breath went out of Scarlett’s lungs in a sickening gasp and she could only stare at the fat old lady who was so obviously pleased at the effect of her statement.

“They haven’t proved it yet but somebody killed this darky who had insulted a white woman. And the Yankees are very upset because so many uppity darkies have been killed recently. They can’t prove it on Captain Butler but they want to make an example of someone, so Dr. Meade says. The doctor says that if they do hang him it will be the first good honest job the Yankees ever did, but then, I don’t know. … And to think that Captain Butler was here just a week ago and brought me the loveliest quail you ever saw for a present and he was asking about you and saying he feared he had offended you during the siege and you would never forgive him.”

“How long will he be in jail?”

“Nobody knows. Perhaps till they hang him, but maybe they won’t be able to prove the killing on him, after all. However, it doesn’t seem to bother the Yankees whether folks are guilty or not, so long as they can hang somebody. They are so upset”—Pitty dropped her voice mysteriously—“about the Ku Klux Klan. Do you have the Klan down in the County? My dear, I’m sure you must and Ashley just doesn’t tell you girls anything about it Klansmen aren’t supposed to tell. They ride around at night dressed up like ghosts and call on Carpetbaggers who steal money and negroes who are uppity. Sometimes they just scare them and warn them to leave Atlanta, but when they don’t behave they whip them and,” Pitty whispered, “sometimes they kill them and leave them where they’ll be easily found with the Ku Klux card on them. … And the Yankees are very angry about it and want to make an example of someone. … But Hugh Elsing told me he didn’t think they’d hang Captain Butler because the Yankees think he does know where the money is and just won’t tell. They are trying to make him tell.”

“The money?”

“Didn’t you know? Didn’t I write you? My dear, you have been buried at Tara, haven’t you? The town simply buzzed when Captain Butler came back here with a fine horse and carriage and his pockets full of money, when all the rest of us didn’t know where our next meal was coming from. It simply made everybody furious that an old speculator who always said nasty things about the Confederacy should have so much money when we were all so poor. Everybody was bursting to know how he managed to save his money but no one had the courage to ask him—except me and he just laughed and said: ‘In no honest way, you may be sure.’ You know how hard it is to get anything sensible out of him.”

“But of course, he made his money out of the blockade—”

“Of course, he did, honey, some of it. But that’s not a drop in the bucket to what that man has really got. Everybody, including the Yankees, believes he’s got millions of dollars in gold belonging to the Confederate government hid out somewhere.”

“Millions—in gold?”

“Well, honey, where did all our Confederate gold go to? Somebody got it and Captain Butler must be one of the somebodies. The Yankees thought President Davis had it when he left Richmond but when they captured the poor man he had hardly a cent. There just wasn’t any money in the treasury when the war was over and everybody thinks some of the blockade runners got it and are keeping quiet about it.”

“Millions—in gold! But how—”

“Didn’t Captain Butler take thousands of bales of cotton to England and Nassau to sell for the Confederate government?” asked Pitty triumphantly. “Not only his own cotton but government cotton too? And you know what cotton brought in England during the war! Any price you wanted to ask! He was a free agent acting for the government and he was supposed to sell the cotton and buy guns with the money and run the guns in for us. Well, when the blockade got too tight, he couldn’t bring in the guns and he couldn’t have spent one one-hundredth of the cotton money on them anyway, so there were simply millions of dollars in English banks put there by Captain Butler and other blockaders, waiting till the blockade loosened. And you can’t tell me they banked that money in the name of the Confederacy. They put it in their own names and it’s still there. … Everybody has been talking about it ever since the surrender and criticizing the blockaders severely, and when the Yankees arrested Captain Butler for killing this darky they must have heard the rumor, because they’ve been at him to tell them where the money is. You see, all of our Confederate funds belong to the Yankees now—at least, the Yankees think so. But Captain Butler says he doesn’t know anything. … Dr. Meade says they ought to hang him anyhow, only hanging is too good for a thief and a profiteer— Dear, you look so oddly! Do you feel faint? Have I upset you talking like this? I knew he was once a beau of yours but I thought you’d fallen out long ago. Personally, I never approved of him, for he’s such a scamp—”

“He’s no friend of mine,” said Scarlett with an effort. “I had a quarrel with him during the siege, after you went to Macon. Where—where is he?”

“In the firehouse over near the public square!”

“In the firehouse?”

Aunt Pitty crowed with laughter.

“Yes, he’s in the firehouse. The Yankees use it for a military jail now. The Yankees are camped in huts all round the city hall in the square and the firehouse is just down the street, so that’s where Captain Butler is. And Scarlett, I heard the funniest thing yesterday about Captain Butler. I forget who told me. You know how well groomed he always was—really a dandy—and they’ve been keeping him in the firehouse and not letting him bathe and every day he’s been insisting that he wanted a bath and finally they led him out of his cell onto the square and there was a long, horse trough where the whole regiment had bathed in the same water! And they told him he could bathe there and he said No, that he preferred his own brand of Southern dirt to Yankee dirt and—”

Scarlett heard the cheerful babbling voice going on and on but she did not hear the words. In her mind there were only two ideas, Rhett had more money than she had even hoped and he was in jail. The fact that he was in jail and possibly might be hanged changed the face of matters somewhat, in fact made them look a little brighter. She had very little feeling about Rhett being hanged. Her need of money was too pressing, too desperate, for her to bother about his ultimate fate. Besides, she half shared Dr. Meade’s opinion that hanging was too good for him. Any man who’d leave a woman stranded between two armies in the middle of the night, just to go off and fight for a Cause already lost, deserved hanging. … If she could somehow manage to marry him while he was in jail, all those millions would be hers and hers alone should he be executed. And if marriage was not possible, perhaps she could get a loan from him by promising to marry him when he was released or by promising—oh, promising anything! And if they hanged him, her day of settlement would never come.

For a moment her imagination flamed at the thought of being made a widow by the kindly intervention of the Yankee government. Millions in gold! She could repair Tara and hire hands and plant miles and miles of cotton. And she could have pretty clothes and all she wanted to eat and so could Suellen and Carreen. And Wade could have nourishing food to fill out his thin cheeks and warm clothes and a governess and afterward go to the university … and not grow up barefooted and ignorant like a Cracker. And a good doctor could look after Pa and as for Ashley—what couldn’t she do for Ashley!

Aunt Pittypat’s monologue broke off suddenly as she said inquiringly: “Yes, Mammy?” and Scarlett, coming back from dreams, saw Mammy standing in the doorway, her hands under her apron and in her eyes an alert piercing look. She wondered how long Mammy had been standing there and how much she had heard and observed. Probably everything, to judge by the gleam in her old eyes.

“Miss Scarlett look lak she tared. Ah spec she better go ter bed.”

“I am tired,” said Scarlett, rising and meeting Mammy’s eyes with a childlike, helpless look, “and I’m afraid I’m catching a cold too. Aunt Pitty, would you mind if I stayed in bed tomorrow and didn’t go calling with you? I can go calling any time and I’m so anxious to go to Fanny’s wedding tomorrow night. And if my cold gets worse I won’t be able to go. And a day in bed would be such a lovely treat for me.”

Mammy’s look changed to faint worry as she felt Scarlett’s hands and looked into her face. She certainly didn’t look well. The excitement of her thoughts had abruptly ebbed, leaving her white and shaking.

“Yo’ han’s lak ice, honey. You come ter bed an’ Ah’ll brew you some sassfrass tea an’ git you a hot brick ter mek you sweat.”

“How thoughtless I’ve been,” cried the plump old lady, hopping from her chair and patting Scarlett’s arm. “Just chattering on and not thinking of you. Honey, you shall stay in bed all tomorrow and rest up and we can gossip together— Oh, dear, no! I can’t be with you. I’ve promised to sit with Mrs. Bonnell tomorrow. She is down with la grippe and so is her cook. Mammy, I’m so glad you are here. You must go over with me in the morning and help me.”