Rhett Butler's people (6 page)

"Young Butler, I may live to regret this. How in the world you managed to get expelled from West Point, I don't know" -- Grandmother raised a

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preemptory hand -- "and do not wish to know. But John Haynes speaks well of you, and John has a level head. If your father hears you've been here, he'll be ..."

Rhett grinned. "Outraged? Outrage is my father's dearest companion." Rhett's bow was deferential. "I am indebted to you, Grandmother Fisher. I'll have Rosemary home for supper." He knelt then so he was no taller than she. "Sister Rosemary, I've a spirited horse and the lightest sulky in the Low Country. Wouldn't you like to fly?"

That afternoon, Rosemary met Tecumseh, Rhett's three-year-old Morgan gelding. The sulky was not much more than a woven cane seat on tall wheels whose spokes were thinner than Rhett's thumbs. Tecumseh floated along at a trot, and when Rhett Butler asked for the gallop, their sulky left the ground.

When Rosemary'd flown about as long as a little girl should fly, Rhett returned her to Grandmother Fisher's and carried her into the house. Rosemary had never felt as safe as she felt in her brother's arms.

On his second visit, Rhett took Rosemary boating. Everyone in the harbor seemed to know him. The sloop they boarded belonged to a free colored man who called her brother by his Christian name. Rosemary was surprised when her brother clasped a negro's hand.

Charleston harbor was busy that afternoon with fishing boats, coastal ketches, and oceangoing schooners. With Old Glory snapping from its parapet, Fort Sumter guarded the harbor mouth. The waves were higher outside the harbor, and Rosemary got thoroughly wetted with spray.

When they returned to Grandmother Fisher's, Rosemary was sunburned, tired, and thoughtful.

"What is it, little one?"

"Rhett, do you love me?"

Her brother touched her cheek. "As my life."

Inevitably, Langston learned his son had visited the Fishers, and he removed Rosemary to Broughton.

A month later, Rosemary was roused after midnight by a carriage in the drive -- Grandmother Fisher's carriage -- and before she was fully awake,

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Charlotte was in her bedroom and in her arms. "Oh, Rosemary," she said. "I'm so sorry this is happening."

Which is when Rosemary Butler learned that her brother Rhett was to fight at daybreak, a duel with Shadrach Watling, who once shot a whippoorwill's head from its body.

Daybreak came and went. At the sound of distant shots, Rhett's mother rushed to the withdrawing room window, peering with myopic, blinking intensity.

"Probably market hunters," Rhett's brother, Julian, announced. "Shooting passenger pigeons." Dr. Ward's wife, Eulalie, nodded in agreement.

Charlotte Fisher's warm hand found Rosemary's cold one and squeezed it hard.

Color flushing her ashen cheeks, Elizabeth Butler rang for a servant. "We will take refreshment."

Rosemary closed her eyes so tightly, red spots flashed behind her eyelids as she prayed silently, Please God, keep my brother safe. Please God. Make Rhett safe!

Quiet as church mice, concealed behind a love seat's curving arm, Rosemary and Charlotte were in the farthest corner of the big, chilly room.

Constance Venable Fisher cleared her throat to issue an opinion. "Langston has chosen a singularly unfortunate time to do his accounts!" Mrs. Fisher's judgmental nod bored through the withdrawing room door, marched down the hall, down the grand staircase, through the public parlor into Langston Butler's office.

Julian replied, "Father is a man of regular habits. Saturday mornings, he does accounts."

Seated on the hard upright chair she had taken as the spinster's due, Miss Juliet Ravanel said, "Sometimes men conceal their fears by punctiliousness. Perhaps Mr. Butler -- "

"Nonsense!" Constance Fisher pronounced. "Langston Butler is stubborn as a root hog."

Uncle Solomon, Broughton's houseman, brought tea and a platter heaped with the ginger cookies Cook usually baked only during Race

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Week. When Mrs. Butler asked for sherry Uncle Solomon replied, "But Missus, it ain't hardly day. Sun just comin' up."

"We will take sherry," Mrs. Butler insisted. After Solomon shut the door too noisily, she said, "As Mr. Butler says, 'Negroes take advantage of their masters' kindness.'"

"Everyone recalls how the Butlers kept slavery in the United States Constitution." Miss Ravanel refreshed a boast with which everyone present was all too familiar. Mrs. Butler took her bait. "Why, yes. My husband's beloved uncle Middleton headed the South Carolina delegation...."

"Yes, dear," Constance Fisher said, not unkindly. "We know all that. Rhett is nothing like Middleton. Rhett favors his grandfather Louis Valentine."

Elizabeth Butler put a hand to her mouth. "We mustn't speak of

him.

Langston never mentions his father's name."

"Dear me, why ever not?" Constance Fisher said cheerfully, "America is a new nation. Blood money is scrubbed clean in a generation."

Broughton had been an unprofitable indigo plantation that couldn't provide for the brothers who'd inherited it. Louis Valentine Butler took himself off to New Orleans and a lifelong association with buccaneer Jean Lafitte, while Middleton Butler entered the slave trade. Fortunes were being made importing Africans, but Middleton's captains paid too much for sickly specimens and his negroes who survived the Middle Passage were discounted at the sales. Middleton quit the business when Charleston's council ordered him to dump dead negroes farther out to sea. Corpses were washing ashore at White Point, where Charleston's gentry took Sabbath promenades.

Since Middleton Butler didn't choose sides until the American Revolution was safely won, he acquired three hundred Loyalist acres forfeited to patriots. As a delegate to the Philadelphia convention, Middleton Butler did keep slavery in the newly minted Constitution.

In 1810, Louis Valentine Butler captured the

Mercato,

a Spanish silver ship, off Tampico and bought a thousand acres of prime rice land for Broughton. Langston Butler, Louis Valentine's son, quarreled fiercely with his father and moved in with his bachelor uncle, Middleton. Louis Valentine bought two thousand more acres. The purchase money came from prizes

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taken off the Texas coast. (Although Louis Valentine swore they'd been Spanish and Mexican ships, rumor persisted they'd been flying the American flag.)

Successive Broughton overseers were hard-pressed to support Middle-ton's extravagant Charleston establishment.

One bright morning in 1825, Louis Valentine Butler sailed from Galveston in

The Pride of Charleston,

and was never seen again. Later that year, Middleton Butler's creditors attended that gentleman's funeral, paying homage to an American patriot while seeking their due from Langston Butler, the Butler heir. Langston Butler sold two hundred slaves to satisfy creditors' claims and married fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Kershaw. Miss Elizabeth was notable for her piety and plain features.

When Elizabeth Butler's firstborn, Rhett Kershaw Butler, emerged into the world, the infant had his caul clenched in his fist, a circumstance Broughton's conjure men said was an unusual, powerful omen. Whether for good or ill, they wouldn't say.

Although the African slave trade had been outlawed two decades before, slave ships sometimes slipped into Charleston harbor, and Langston Butler was a willing buyer of Angolans, Coromantees, Gambians, and Ebos: coastal Africans resistant to fevers and familiar with rice production. He completed Broughton Plantation with two thousand acres from Colonel Ravanel (who was too despondent after his wife's death to drive a hard bargain).

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

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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."

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"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