Wordlessly, Langston Butler herded his family and friends back through the broad doors into the family quarters. Julian took Rosemary's hand before she could elude him.
Langston Butler closed the walnut doors and set his back against them.
The air shimmered between father and son. "As you have no further business with the Butler family, sir, you may depart.”
CHAPTER THREE
"Beloved Brother Rhett ..."
In the years to come, little Rosemary wrote her brother faithfully. She told him about her piebald pony, Jack, who had the pleasantest manners.
Rosemary rode Jack everywhere. "Mother says I am becoming a Wild Indian.
Have you met any Wild Indians? "When I ask him to jump," Rosemary wrote, "Jack swivels his head and rolls his eyes and lays his ears flat. I believe Jack is insulted!”
When a water moccasin struck Jack, Rosemary wrote how she and Hercules sat up through the night with her dying pony. Though Rosemary's hand was steady, this letter was spotted with tearstains.
Rosemary had returned to the Fishers and wrote about that household.
Charlotte doesn't think ill of anyone. I don't think her brother, Jamie, intends to be cruel, but his friends are so clever and reckless, Jamie must act as they do. One morning, he came home while Charlotte and I were at breakfast. Jamie's clothes were filthy! He stumbled and he smelled very bad' When Charlotte reproved him, Jamie called Charlotte "an interfering hussy. " Charlotte set her lip and refused to speak to Jamie. For days and days, Jamie pretended nothing was wrong but in the end he apologized!
Charlotte is exactly like Grandmother Fisher — the best of friends but stubborn to a fault!
Jamie is gentler than he wants us to think! When he isn't with his friends, he tells us amusing stories. Some are not true! Jamie loves horses and is the best rider I have ever seen! Hercules lets Jamie ride Gero, though Father would be furious if he knew! Have I told you about Gero? Hercules says Gero is the fastest Thoroughbred in the Low Country.
Jamie's friends are Andrew Ravanel, Henry Kershaw, and Edgar Puryear. Weren't they your friends, too? Jamie says John Haynes is a "young stick," but he daren't criticize John Haynes in Grandmother Fisher's hearing!
John Haynes asks if I've heard from you and I am sorry I must tell him I haven't!
If I were older I would join you and we could travel even to Egypt. I should very much like to see the pyramids. Have you seen the pyramids?
In much the same way that Rosemary knew Jesus loved little children, she knew Abolitionists were wicked and Yankees hated and feared Southerners, even children like herself. From more personal experience, Rosemary knew grown-ups argued fiercely about politics and that friendships were made or discarded depending on what other grown-ups were doing far away in the United States Congress.
When Rosemary was ten, Congress passed the Compromise of 1850 and Nullifiers and Unionists became friendly for a time. Langston Butler, who hadn't spoken to Cathecarte Puryear since he removed Rhett from Cathecarte's tutelage, nodded to Puryear on Queen Street.
When Mrs. Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, was published, all Charleston deplored the wicked book. Grandmother Fisher said it was too simple for Rosemary and Charlotte.
"How can it be too simple for children?" Rosemary asked, desperate to read the book everybody was talking about.
"Simple in the sense of being simpleminded," Grandmother Fisher grumbled.
In her next letter, Rosemary asked if Rhett had read Uncle Tom's Cabin.
This brief political tranquillity ended when Rosemary was fourteen and Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the West, slave owners and abolitionists were murdering one another.
At about this time, Rosemary began paying rather more attention to Charleston's eligible bachelors. "Edgar Allan Puryear claimed Andrew Ravanel cheated at cards, so Andrew challenged him," Rosemary wrote.
"Everybody thought they'd fight, but Edgar apologized, so now people suspect Edgar is a coward. Jamie Fisher calls Andrew a 'beautiful' horseman.
Do you think a man can be beautiful? "Henry Kershaw caned a free colored tailor in front of his shop after the tailor asked payment of an overdue bill. The man died of his injuries.
(Father joked that the tailor got his due!)”
Rosemary described Congress Haynes's funeral, when mourners blocked Meeting Street from Queen Street to White Point. "John Haynes asked about you again. How I wish I had some news of you, dear brother!
"Do you remember visiting me when you first came back from West Point? I was such a child and you seemed so very tall! Do you remember going sailing? "Last Saturday, Gero beat Mr. Canby's Planet, and Colonel Ravanel's Chapultapec. Hercules took credit and tried to order a basket of champagne to celebrate his victory. Hercules said he wanted to 'treat all the white gentlemen.' What a notion! Father sent Hercules back to Broughton to 'refresh his manners.' “
Rosemary assured Rhett: "Mother loves you, Rhett! I know she does!”
This was conjecture; after her elder son was banished, Elizabeth Butler burst into tears on the rare occasions Rhett's name was mentioned.
Abolitionist murders in distant Kansas disrupted long-standing Charleston connections. Cousins quit speaking to cousins. Charlestonians once deemed extreme were lauded as visionaries. Grandmother Fisher kept Langston Butler's friends from expelling the Unionist Cathecarte Puryear from the St. Cecilia Society. In response, Langston Butler withdrew his fifteen-year-old daughter from the Fisher home again.
Thereafter, Rosemary saw Charlotte and Jamie Fisher only at social gatherings. To Rhett, she wrote, "Jamie and Andrew Ravanel's sister, Juliet, have become bosom friends. She and Jamie hone their tongues on one another, sharpening them for their victims.”
Rosemary told her brother that Andrew Ravanel had swept Mary Loring off her feet. All Charleston expected Andrew and Mary to be affianced, but, attended by salacious rumors, Mary Loring left suddenly for Split Rock, North Carolina. Andrew was now courting Cynthia Peterson.
"My maid Cleo means well but is upset by trifles. Cleo is a flibbertigibbet!
"You remember pert little Sudie? Well, Sudie has jumped the broomstick with Hercules and has her firstborn! Hercules couldn't be prouder. He sends his regards!”
She concluded this letter, "Please do write. I miss you awfully and yearn to hear all your news. Your loving sister, Rosemary.”
Hercules told Rosemary where to send her letters.
When Rosemary asked how Hercules knew Rhett's whereabouts, he laughed. "Miss Rosemary, don't you reckon horses talk to each other? Everywhere they goes, horses is talkin'. I sneaks into the stalls at night and listens.”
So Rosemary addressed letters to "Rhett Butler, San Francisco, California Territory" and "Rhett Butler, General Delivery, New Orleans, Louisiana.”
She sealed them carefully and doubled the postage. "Be sure and mail this today, Uncle.”
"Yes, Miss," Uncle Solomon replied, although for some reason, her letters made the old houseman uneasy.
Rosemary never heard from her brother, and as the years passed, her weekly letters became fortnightly and then monthly.
Rosemary's final letter was written on the eve of her debut to Charleston society at the Jockey Club Ball. In that letter, sixteen-year-old Rosemary confided her fears that no young man would sign her dance card and that her white satin gown was more girlish than womanly.
Cleo fussed at her: "We ain't gonna get ready less'n you quit scribblin' and get to dressin', Missy." Rosemary ignored her maid and went out to the yard, where Hercules was grooming Gero.