"But..." Scarlett said.
"So long's Rhett's across the sea, they can't do nothin', so they been botherin' you so you'll beg him back." Belle was anguished. "Whatever you do, Miss Scarlett, please don't ask Rhett to come home.”
CHAPTER FIFTY SIX
Three Widows
Although the Jonesboro telegraph office was closed Sundays, Scarlett interrupted the telegrapher's supper and cajoled him until he agreed to accompany her to the railway station, where the telegrapher topped his instrument's batteries, rolled up his sleeves, tested his signal strength, and sent Scarlett's frantic warning rattling across the Atlantic.
Scarlett paced until the key clattered Rob Campbell's reply; "Rhett and Tazewell sailed for New York Thursday.”
"Are you all right, ma'am?" the telegrapher asked. "Won't you sit down?”
"Send my message to the St. Nicholas, the Astor House, the Metropolitan, the Fifth Avenue ... for God's sake, send it to all the New York hotels!”
"Ma'am," the telegrapher said. "I don't know the New York hotels. I never been to New York.”
Scarlett wanted to slap the man into usefulness. She wanted to weep in frustration. "Send it to the hotels I named," Scarlett said through clenched teeth.
Riding back to Tara, Scarlett's mind whirled. What could she do? What could any woman do? On the road between somewhere and somewhere else, she reined in her horse. The sky was blue. She could hear a warbler in the brush beside the road. As coldly and clearly as she'd ever known anything, Scarlett knew that if Rhett Butler were murdered, she'd want to die, too.
Curiously, her harsh self-sentence eased her soul. Her mind stopped spinning and she understood what she'd need to do.
As Scarlett dismounted, Rosemary ran to her. "Did you warn Rhett?”
Scarlett took off her bonnet and shook her hair loose. "They've already sailed. When Rhett comes to Tara, the Watlings will ambush him.”
Rosemary clamped her eyes shut for a moment. "Damn them!”
"Yes, goddamn them all! Where are our preening male champions when we really need them?”
In the parlor, a subdued Mammy brought the two women hot tea. The house was quiet; the children were outside playing in the long twilight.
"Rosemary," Scarlett began, "we are unalike in many respects, but we love your brother.”
Rosemary nodded.
"And we would do anything we had to do — anything necessary — to keep him from harm.”
"Scarlett, what are you thinking of?”
"Two times, I've worn black for husbands who died protecting Southern womanhood. I loathe mourning. I will not wear black for Rhett Butler.”
Scarlett poured their tea, added Rosemary's cream and her sugar. When she gave Rosemary her cup, it chattered against its saucer. "Rosemary Butler Haynes Ravanel, like myself, you are twice widowed. When your husbands went off to fight, were you glad to see them go?”
"What? Are you mad?”
"On the contrary. I may be, after many years, putting men's madness aside." Scarlett went to the decanter and poured a healthy tot of brandy into her tea. "Oh, I know, I know. Ladies don't drink brandy in their tea.
Frankly, Rosemary, I no longer care what ladies do or don't do.”
"Scarlett, I feel like a horse is running away with me. Tell me what you're planning. Please! I beg you!”
So Scarlett told her.
First thing Monday morning, Dilcey heated water and they bathed in the kitchen — Scarlett first, then Rosemary while Scarlett toweled herself and dried her hair. Field-work grime turned their bathwater gray.
Mammy ironed petticoats as they sat side by side, wrapped in towels, while Dilcey braided and coiled their hair.
Mammy was torn between dismay at what Scarlett might be up to and delight in their transformation.
The men had been exiled from the house, and after their hair was done, in their shifts, the ladies searched Scarlett's trunks for clothing. When Scarlett unfolded a pink watered-silk dress, a receipt fluttered to the floor: "Mme. Frère, Bourbon Street.”
"Dear me," Scarlett said. "Rhett bought this in New Orleans." She held the dress up to Rosemary. "It flatters your complexion.”
"The bodice? Scarlett, I am not so well endowed...”
"Dilcey will take a tuck in it." Scarlett chuckled. "Did Rhett ever tell you how he and I attended the notorious Quadroon Ball?”
As the ladies prepared, Pork bridled Taras handsomest saddle horses. He rubbed them down, picked loose hair, and clipped their manes and tails before tying them to the hitch rack for Prissy's attentions. In the tack room, he found two dusty sidesaddles and patted the smaller one reverently. "Miz Ellen," Pork said. "Everything's changed at Tara. Not for the better, neither.”
As she plaited manes and tails, Prissy chattered. "They sure gonna look nice, ain't they? Is Miss Scarlett 'n' Miss Rosemary goin' to a barbecue? Way they fixed up, I bet that's where they goin'. Reckon we goin', too?”
She took a step back to admire her work. "I puttin' ribbons in the manes and tails. Pork, what color do you reckon?”
"Miss Scarlett's be green," Pork pronounced authoritatively.
The Jonesboro market shared its siding with the slaughterhouse and Maclver's cotton warehouse. During the harvest, cotton was auctioned here, and throughout the year, Clayton County farmers came to buy and sell livestock. The market's pens and rough shelters butted against the tracks. At the south end of the market, sale animals were delivered, weighed, numbered, and penned until they were driven down the market's wide aisles, gates slamming behind them, into a hundred-foot sale ring enclosed by a horse-high, bull-stout oak fence. On market days, negroes perched on this fence, while whites enjoyed the relative comfort of an open wooden grandstand. Under the grandstand, two dour women in the sales office accepted payments, deducted the market commission, and issued the ticket that let the successful bidder claim his beast. Beside the sales office, a colored woman had a wooden booth where she sold ham slices and corn bread. Out of respect for the Baptists, she kept her demijohn of white liquor beneath the counter.
The market was loud with the bawling, squealing, baaing, whinnying, clucking, and hee-hawing of mules, horses, hogs, geese, ducks, and chickens.
That particular Monday morning, parched grass crunched underfoot and red dust filmed cattle, corrals, and the grandstand. Men's hat brims were tinged red. The dust smelled of dried manure.
Order buyers making up consignments for Atlanta butchers wore linen suits and affixed their ties with gold stickpins. But most here today were poor men who'd brought in a hog or sought a milk cow with a few more seasons left in her. Some men were shoeless.
By one o'clock, the market was humming. Livestock came into the auction ring, the auctioneer cried his singsong, and the dust hung in the air like red fog.
When the two ladies appeared, startled farmers nudged one another.
One simpleton rubbed his eyes and whistled. "Gol-ly!”
Fringed silk parasols protected the ladies' delicate complexions; elbow length gloves protected their delicate hands.
Rosemary smiled graciously. "Why, thank you, sir." The young farmer who opened the gate had never heard a sweeter voice.
They were the perfection of Southern womanhood — the ladies their own wives, worn by toil and childbirth, could never be. Of course they weren't dusty — no fleck of dust would dare light on them. Their eyes passed over the man beating a sick cow to its feet, three-day-old veal calves bleating for their mothers, and a market worker lashing a reluctant bull into a pen. Ladies never noticed such things. They were too fine to notice such things. Men took off their hats and smiled as they passed.