Cassius struck three high lonesome chords. "Sir, thank you, sir. I reckon everybody's heard of Cap'n Butler.”
Rhett raised his hands. "Please don't stop the dancing on my account.
Don't let me interrupt your festivities. There's far much too much to celebrate.
Who would have predicted brave Charleston would goad the sleeping Federal giant?" When Rhett Butler bowed, his black hair gleamed.
"Edgar Puryear. So you're an officer now. Is that Henry Kershaw? My God, it's Lieutenant Henry Kershaw? And my old friend Andrew ...”
Andrew Ravanel was speechless, transfixed.
The laugh lines at the corners of Rosemary's brother's eyes were familiar and dear. How could she have forgotten how graceful he was? Rosemary walked to him as if in a dream.
Rhett's eyes stopped laughing.
Cassius struck the first gentle notes of Stephen Foster's "Slumber My Darling" and paused.
"Little Rosemary, my beloved sister." Her brother's eyes were moist as he took her hands. "May I have the honor of this dance?”
CHAPTER NINE
A Barbecue at a Georgia Plantation
Rhett Butler hadn't felt so helpless since that night twelve years ago, when he drank whiskey on Colonel Jack's porch and found nothing worth living for.
Fort Sumter fired upon! What did the fools think they were playing at!
Rhett said, "I'll take delivery at the railhead, Mr. Kennedy, my Atlanta bank will honor the draft.”
Frank Kennedy stroked his skimpy gingerish beard and turned Rhett's check over, as if there might be more information on the blank side. "Yes, of course," he said. "Of course ...”
"If you are worried ...”
"Oh no, Mr. Butler. No sir." Frank Kennedy shook his head too vigorously.
The two men stood in the main room of Kennedy's Jonesboro store.
Hay cradles, smoked hams, and pitchforks hung from the rafters. Aisles were crammed with dry goods and farm supplies. The store stank of liniment, molasses, and pine tar.
The respectable citizens of Charleston, Langston Butler among them, had ignited a war! The smug, virtuous, hymn-singing, damnable fools!
A negro clerk was cautiously ladling turpentine into an earthenware crock, another swept the floor. Despite his unprepossessing appearance, Kennedy was a man of consequence who owned fifty slaves, a second store in Atlanta, and thousands of acres in prime Georgia cotton.
Rhett had bought Kennedy's stored crop and stood to make a fortune.
He should have felt good about that.
He felt like hell.
"Your business reputation is excellent." Kennedy blinked and backtracked.
"I mean ...”
Rhett was expressionless. "Some say I'm a renegade.”
Kennedy ran a hand through his hair. "No offense, sir. I meant no offense.”
He folded Rhett's check and inserted it into his wallet. Having pocketed the wallet, he patted his pocket.
Rhett Butler didn't voice his opinion that renegades might rob you or call you out but they wouldn't fuss you to death.
A thought struck the embarrassed merchant. "Say, Butler." Unconsciously, Kennedy patted his pocket again. "Have you anything on this afternoon? Wouldn't you like a day in the country? John Wilkes's son is getting engaged and John is hosting a barbecue. Everyone's invited. Twelve Oaks' hospitality ... why, I can't praise it too much." His face went blank as he sought an encomium. "Twelve Oaks' hospitality is famous!" He pointed more or less northward. "All the way to Atlanta. Please join me. I'll bring you back in time for your train.”
Since Rhett's train wouldn't leave until ten that evening and, in his dismal state of mind, an afternoon in the Jonesboro Hotel would be an eternity, Rhett Kershaw Butler accepted Frank Kennedy's invitation.
More often than we care to admit, inconsequential decisions change our lives.
Kennedy's buggy rolled past thickets of tender glowing redbuds. Spice bushes perfumed the air. Dogwoods shimmered like ghosts in the woods beside the road.
This display, north Georgia at its most beautiful, plucked at Rhett's heart. He'd wintered in Manhattan, where war talk dominated every dining room and gentleman's club. Rhett had heard Abraham Lincoln speak at Cooper Union and thought the gangling, long-faced westerner would make a formidable enemy. A hundred thousand Yankees were forming into regiments.
He'd traveled to New Haven, where a gun maker told the affable Mr. Butler he couldn't find the machinery he needed. "I have more contracts than I can fill," the man complained. "Butler, can you help me buy barrel lathes?”
One Sunday afternoon, Rhett toured the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where a hundred warships were being fitted. Hammering and forging and coppering hulls and painters on scaffolds and hundreds of women sewing in the sail lofts. On a Sunday.
As the South prepared to fight Goliath with gallantry.
Damn the fools!
Rhett Butler loved the Southland's gentle courtesies and hospitality, the fiery tempers just beneath languid drawls. But if a fact was disagreeable, Southerners disbelieved that fact. For how could fact outfight gallantry? Frank Kennedy misinterpreted Rhett's silence as a stranger's unease crashing a party whose host he'd never met. Frank provided reassurances.
Their host, John Wilkes, was "a Georgia gentleman of the old school" and Wilkes's son, Ashley, although younger, of course, was of the old school, too. Ashley's bride-to-be was "a little slip of a thing," but Melanie Hamilton was, Frank assured Rhett, "a Spark.”
Getting no response from his guest, Frank went on to name the young bloods who'd be there: the Tarletons, the Calverts, the Munroes, and the Fontaines. "When Tony Fontaine shot Brent Tarleton in the leg — both of them were drunk as lords! — they made a joke of it! A joke!" He shook his head: deploring men he half wished to be. Rhett Butler wasn't too sentimental to profit from Southern blunders.
The South grew two-thirds of the world's cotton and Rhett knew Lincoln's navy would blockade the Southern ports. After the ports were closed, cotton prices would skyrocket. Rhett's cotton would be safe in the Bahamas before Federal blockaders came on station.
The money was nothing: ashes in his mouth. Rhett felt like a grown-up watching children playing games. They yelled, they gestured, they pretended to be Indians or Redcoats or Yankee soldiers. They strutted and played at war. It made Rhett Butler want to weep. He was helpless to prevent it. Utterly helpless.
His guest's silence made Frank Kennedy uncomfortable. He babbled, "John Wilkes is no rustic, Mr. Butler. No indeed. The Wilkeses' library has so many books; why, I expect John has hundreds of books! John Wilkes has read everything a gentleman should read and his son, Ashley, takes after John. As they say, 'The apple never falls far from the tree.' You'll meet Gerald O'Hara, too. Fine fellow! Gerald's from Savannah. Not originally, of course, originally, Gerald's from Ireland. Not that I have anything against the Irish. I'm keeping company with his daughter Suellen, so I couldn't have anything against the Irish, ha, ha.”
When he looked for Rhett's reply, Rhett's eyes were remote. "At any rate," Frank filled the silence, "Gerald bought Tara Plantation and that's how Gerald came to Clayton County." Frank gave his horse a stern look.
"Suellen is a peach." Frank slapped his knee. "A Georgia peach.”
They continued in silence.
Rhett was picturing Charleston, where men who'd been Rhett's schoolmates were manning guns hammering Fort Sumter while their elders made speeches each more belligerent than the last.
Might Rhett persuade Rosemary and John to leave? "Just until this shakes out, John. California has opportunities for a man like you. Or London, John. Wouldn't your Meg love to visit London? And Rosemary ...”
Andrew Ravanel and Rosemary had created a scandal at that patriotic ball. John and Rosemary weren't speaking.