Rosemary retied her bonnet. "You'll find a pecan pie in the hamper.
Perhaps it will sweeten your disposition.”
"Oh Rosemary, please don't leave. I'm sorry. I don't mean to drive you away.”
She hesitated, "There are greens, and Mammy's corn bread, too.”
Ashley said, "I am partial to greens and corn bread. Thank you, Rosemary.
Won't you bide for a while?" He massaged his underarm, which was sore from the crutch. "I never knew how ... convenient two legs are.”
"Ashley, you tried to help, and I am grateful. You risked your life...”
"I got Will Benteen killed.”
"Shut your mouth, Major Wilkes. You will not blame yourself.”
Ashley grimaced. "Rosemary... dear, kind Rosemary, you've never been sick of yourself. You've never prayed for the courage to end — “
"Ashley Wilkes! Need I remind you my husband took his own life?”
He dropped his head in his hands and groaned.
Rosemary rapped a spoon against a bowl and said, more tenderly, "Eat, Ashley. It'll put iron in your blood.”
He did and muttered, "It tastes like a rusty barrel hoop.”
Rosemary smiled at Ashley's tiny joke and thought, It's a start anyway.
Thank you, dear Lord.
Ashley wouldn't murder himself. Ashley Wilkes had no dreadful secrets to rise up and swallow him.
When Rhett and Wade returned from Atlanta, Wade was wearing his new hat at the same jaunty angle Rhett wore his.
Taz had stayed in town. "Belle and Taz have some catching up to do,”
Rhett told Scarlett, adding, "Belle hasn't seen hide nor hair of the Watlings.
She thinks they've gone west. 'Poor Poppa ain't got no home.' “
"I hate that old fool," Scarlett said.
"A lifetime of disappointments can make a dangerous man.”
That afternoon, after the children finished their lessons, Rhett asked, "Who wants to learn how to ride?”
The smaller children tried to outshriek each other. Rhett held up a hand and said, "We'll go to the horse barn and I'll teach you, provided you do exactly as I say.”
Scarlett blanched.
Rhett touched her cheek. "Sweetheart, remember how much Bonnie Blue loved her pony? Bonnie would have wanted us to remember that.”
Rhett set each child on a tame workhorse and led it around the corral on a longe line. "Ella, hang on to the horse's mane.
"Beau, you must look where you want your horse to go!”
Scarlett went into the house to her office. On the desktop, tied with the black silk ribbon befitting important documents, were the deeds to Tara and her Atlanta property. In appropriate places, her loans were declared "satisfied.”
Scarlett dropped her head into her hands and cried.
In the morning, Rhett rode into Jonesboro, where he crossed the tracks into Darktown. He reined up at Reverend J. Robert Maxwell's modest home next to the First African Baptist Church. Rhett tied his horse to the picket fence and waited until a plump young man came onto the front porch. "Good morning, Reverend Maxwell," Rhett said. "Do you suppose we'll get rain today?”
The young man assessed the sky. "I don't believe we will. I believe it will be hot.”
"It might at that. I'm Rhett Butler.”
"Yes, sir. I heard you were at Tara Plantation. Won't you come in? My wife is just making coffee.”
The Reverend's parlor boasted one reading chair, three straight chairs, and a New Haven clock on the mantel. The bare oak floor and front windows gleamed. The men took chairs facing each other and discussed weather and crops until Mrs. Maxwell (who seemed young to be married) set a tin tray on a third chair between them.
When Rhett thanked her, Mrs. Maxwell blushed and withdrew.
The men busied themselves with cream and sugar. "Mr. Benteen was a fair employer," the preacher said. "I wish there were more like him.”
"Most planters don't understand free labor any better than free laborers do," Rhett said.
"That's true, sir. That's true." The young man nodded. "It's a new world for us all.”
"A better one, I hope.”
The young man cocked his head, listening for overtones. "Some white men don't hope so." He eyed Rhett over the rim of his coffee cup. "I've heard about you, Mr. Butler. The Reverend William Prescott preached in my church.”
"Reverend Prescott is a powerful preacher.”
"Praise the Lord. William told me you shot his son-in-law.”
"Tunis Bonneau was my friend.”
The young preacher set his cup down. "That's what William said." He ran his hand over his face as if brushing away cobwebs. "I pray those terrible days are over.”
The mantel clock ticked.
Maxwell continued: "Reverend Prescott related a curious story. He said you bought a ship from his daughter — a sunken ship.”
"The Merry Widow sank in my service." Rhett leaned forward. "What did William Prescott say about his daughter?”
"Mrs. Bonneau has moved to Philadelphia. She has her son, Nat, to think about." Maxwell put down his coffee cup and went to the window.
When he turned, sunlight haloed his head and Rhett squinted to make out his expression. "Mr. Butler, you may know we are asking the legislature for negro normal schools so our children can be educated by negro teachers.”
Rhett set his cup on the tray.
Maxwell continued. "You have many powerful friends. I'd take it kindly if you spoke to them.”
After a moment, Rhett said, "I will.”
The young minister steepled his fingers. "Just how can I help you, Mr. Butler?”
At daybreak Scarlett woke to chanting: "Long John. Long John. Be a long time gone." Tara's workers were filing across the sunrise. As they had done so many times before, in good years and bad, they went down into the bottoms, spread out, and started to work.
Scarlett hurried downstairs into the kitchen, where Rhett and Rosemary faced an enormous breakfast and the beaming Mammy. "Rhett,”
Scarlett cried, "they're back. Tara's people are back.”
"Why, yes, my dear, they are.”
"But how?”
Her husband shrugged. "We've work to be done and they have families to feed. They've no reason to be afraid anymore. I said we'd pay a little more.”
Scarlett's stood up. "More? More? Why, they hardly earn what we're paying them now!" But even as she was speaking, her sore back reminded her of hoeing and plowing and stooping. She laughed at herself and said, "I suppose Tara can afford to pay a little more.”
After Taz returned from Atlanta, he and Rhett called a meeting of cotton planters. Tony Fontaine and his brother Alex came, and Beatrice Tarleton arrived on the stallion that had sired Will's orphan foals. Mr. MacKenzie, a dour Yankee who'd bought ruined plantations for a dime on the dollar and suspected he'd paid five cents too much, was accompanied by the shy Mr. Schmidt, who asked Mrs. Tarleton if she knew who'd lost a roan gelding he'd seen running loose.
Scarlett and Rhett greeted them at the door, and when everyone was settled in the parlor, Rhett introduced Taz. "Mr. Watling is a partner in a New Orleans cotton-factoring firm.”
"Well, I'll be dam — darned," Beatrice Tarleton said, "At long last, I get to meet Rhett's bastard. I've must say, young man, you don't favor your father!”
Accustomed to Beatrice's bluntness, her neighbors chuckled. The Yankee planters kept their expressions blank.
"I'm sorry to disappoint you, madam," Taz said pleasantly. "In fact, my father was Colonel Andrew Ravanel. You may know of him?”
"I'll be damned." Beatrice settled back in her chair.
"Only if the Lord dislikes rude old women," Rhett sang from the back of the room. Taz explained their crops fetched poor prices because the British market was depressed and New England mills wanted well-packed, graded, carefully ginned cotton.