One afternoon on the rue de la Paix, they strolled past excited young ballet dancers entering a maison de couture. Taz tipped his hat to the girls and observed, "There are other women, you know.”
"How dare you say that to me!" Rhett's eyes flared so hot, Taz took a step backward.
Taz would wake in the middle of the night, to find Rhett sitting at the window. Winter moonlight bleached his face.
Every week, dutifully, Rhett wrote the children. He asked Taz to read his letters before he mailed them. "Just the musings of an utterly ordinary tourist," Rhett said. "I mustn't frighten them.”
In his letters, Paris sights Rhett had apparently passed without noticing were described in engaging detail. All their days were sunny. Rhett was amused by Paris's famously truculent cabmen and waiters, who pretended they couldn't understand Creole French.
Taz's letters to Belle were cheerful, too.
Rosemary wrote, care of Rob Campbell, that she was staying at Tara "until I decide what to do with my life.”
Belle wrote Taz, "Your Grandpa Watling's come by twice. Might be one day I can get him to take a cup of coffee.”
Buying Christmas presents was an agony. Though the temperature was below freezing, Rhett sweated through a Harris tweed coat. After he bought the children's gifts, he bolted from the cab into a milliner's shop on the Place de la Concorde. He wasn't inside five minutes.
With a groan, Rhett collapsed in the seat. "There. That's done. Taz, I don't think I can do more. Would you see everything is shipped?”
That night, Rhett vanished from the hotel. He was gone a full week, and a gendarme and his captain brought him back. "No, monsieur," the captain told Taz, "Monsieur Butler has committed no outrages. But the gentleman takes his life in his hands..." He paused. "In Montfaucon, where we found your friend, gendarmes travel in fours.”
"Rhett?”
He coughed. He couldn't stop coughing, but he waved away Taz's help.
"Perhaps Monsieur is ill?" The captain of gendarmes wondered.
"He is," Taz said, and gave the man twenty francs.
Xf Paris was cold, Glasgow was colder. Taz and Rhett spent their first night at the Great Western Hotel opposite Gallowgate railway station.
There weren't many people in the enormous dining room: a handful of commercial travelers reading as they ate alone, an elderly couple with their grandchild enjoying a celebratory evening out. The old couple consulted carefully before ordering a bottle of the cheapest champagne.
Rhett picked at his food and drank nothing. In the morning, he was gone.
Taz visited Glasgow's hospitals and the central jail, where he was directed to the Gartnavel Lunatic Asylum.
After Scarlett's telegram came, Taz placed an ad in the Glasgow Herald: ANYONE KNOWING THE WHEREABOUTS OF MR. RHETT BUTLER — A MIDDLE-AGED AMERICAN GENTLEMAN, TALL, WELL-DRESSED, APPARENTLY MENTALLY DISTURBED CAN CLAIM A SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FROM MR. TAZEWELL WATLING AT THE GREAT WESTERN HOTEL.
Four days later, a nervous cabman drove Taz to an alehouse in the slums of Glasgow's East End. "It's a wee bit risk, man," he'd advised. "It'd be a wise man who took precautions.”
Coal smoke was so thick it was dusk at 4:30. Tenements loomed over a narrow street lit on one corner by a gaslight's dirty circle of light. Taz said, "I'll pay after I see Mr. Butler.”
The cabman snarled, "I'll have my dosh now. I'll not set foot in yon place.”
"If you want your money, you'll wait.”
The cabbie stood in his box to peer up and down the street. A cat squalled in an alleyway.
"I'll double your money if you wait.”
The cabman subsided, "I canna say I will and I canna say I willnay. For God's sake, man, be quick.”
The moment he passed through the unmarked front door, Taz's eyes watered. The low room was blue with smoke and reeked of unwashed bodies.
Old stinks had varnished the tin ceiling brown. Thick stools lined the bar; there were benches at the tables. The furniture was too heavy to use as weapons.
In the back of the dim room, wearing a mink-lined cape, gold nugget shirt studs, and thick gold watch chain, Rhett Butler was at a table with five of the worst ruffians Taz had ever seen.
"Hello, Taz. Come here and I'll introduce you. Remember my grandfather, Louis Valentine? Broughton Plantation was purchased by worthies just like these.”
"God, don't he go on?" one worthy chuckled.
Rhett's clothes were rumpled and he hadn't shaved, but he was cold sober and the glass before him was untouched.
"I've a cab, Rhett.”
"The night is young, Tazewell Watling, and I'm discussing love with Scottish philosophers. Mr. Smith, at my left, claims regular thrashings warm the marital bed. Mr. Jones — this sturdy, sandy-haired fellow — holds similar opinions.”
"Can't have 'em puttin' on airs," Jones affirmed.
"Certainly not," Rhett agreed.
"Rhett, I've been looking everywhere for you." Taz handed the telegram to Rhett.
Kill or cure: Those were the words Tazewell Watling thought while his friend read Scarlett's brief message.
Staring at the missive, sweat beaded Rhett's forehead.
Then with his old litheness, he rose to his feet. "Well, gentlemen, regrettably, all good things must come to an end.”
Smith objected: "Here, now; where're you going?”
Jones got up and tugged his cap over his eyes, "We was goin' to have us a rare old time.”
"Somehow" — Rhett chuckled — "I suspected that was your intent.”
Jones dropped his hand and came up with a thick wooden truncheon.
Something sharp gleamed in Smith's hand. The bartender dropped his rag, hurried out the back, and let the door clunk shut behind him.
"You'll stay wi' us, sir. Just for a wee while.”
Tazewell drew his revolver from his jacket pocket and pointed it casually at the ceiling. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, gentleman, but our cabman won't wait.”
"Good Lord," Rhett mocked him, "we might have to walk back to our hotel? Good night, friends. Perhaps we'll meet again.”
Jones's truncheon dangled in his hand. He grinned. "Aye, sir. Come back anytime, sir. We'll be lookin' for yer.”
Outside, their cabman was signaling urgently, but Rhett patted his pockets and frowned. "I left my gloves.”
"For God sakes, Rhett, are you mad?”
Rhett puzzled for a moment before smiling his once-familiar smile.
"Loving is a chancy thing, Taz. You risk your immortal soul.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Drought
Clayton County was dry. Bindweed was strangling the tender cotton plants. With Big Sam gone and Ashley back at Twelve Oaks, Will Benteen started cultivating before light, trusting his horse to stay in the furrows.
Instead of resting at noon, Will hitched a fresh horse and kept working, eating cheese and bread as he walked behind the plow.
But Will's plow couldn't weed the ridges and couldn't thin the cotton plants to eight inches apart. Hoeing wants human hands. Only Mammy, who was too old, and three-year-old Robert Benteen, who was too young, were spared stoop labor.
For the hundredth time that morning, Scarlett shook weeds off her hoe. "Wade Hampton Hamilton! Hoe the weeds, not the cotton.”
"Yes, Mother." Though he'd severed the plant's roots, Wade heeled it carefully back into place.
Scarlett closed her eyes, seeking patience. Dilcey called, "You doin' all right, Miss Scarlett?”
Scarlett snapped, "If you'd spend less time gabbing and more time hoeing, we'd get through this field.”
Wade muttered under his breath, "How can we do that?”
Which was, Scarlett thought but didn't say, a good question.