"My Suellen can be 'sharpish,' " Frank Kennedy was saying. "But she soon repents. You're a man of the world, Butler. You know what I mean.”
Rhett held his sharpish tongue.
They forded the Flint River and trotted briskly up a rise. The flatroofed, many-chimneyed plantation house was smaller than Broughton but grand enough for all that. Broad Corinthian columns supported a roof that shaded broad verandas on three sides of the house.
"You'll see for yourself," Frank Kennedy insisted. "Twelve Oaks' hospitality — why, it's legendary!”
There was a bustle at the turnaround, where riders dismounted and carriages disgorged their occupants. Negro grooms removed horses and rigs while guests exchanged enthusiastic greetings with neighbors they hadn't seen since last week.
The tang of barbecued pork flavored the hickory smoke.
On the veranda, maidens in their prettiest outfits flirted with beaux in tight gray trousers and ruffled linen shirts. Older folks solemnly considered symptoms and remedies while children darted like barn swallows across the lawn.
Was this the last glorious, graceful Southern afternoon? Or was it the Southland's funeral? Frank and Rhett were greeted by a white-haired patrician with a young woman at his side. "John Wilkes, John's daughter, Miss Honey Wilkes: Mr. Rhett Butler. Mr. Butler and I had business today and I thought we'd flee our cares for a while. John, I hope you don't mind.”
"My home is open to any gentleman," John Wilkes said simply. "Welcome, sir, to Twelve Oaks.”
"You are too kind.”
"Your accent, sir?”
"The Low Country, sir, born and reared.”
Wilkes frowned, "Butler ... Rhett Butler ... Wasn't there ... Don't I recall... ?”
The flicker in the older man's eyes told Rhett that Wilkes had indeed 'recalled'... but Wilkes's smile never faltered. "No matter, I suppose. Tom!
Bring the salver. Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Butler have had a dusty journey.”
Honey Wilkes was waving eagerly. "Oh look, Daddy. It's the O'Haras.
Frank Kennedy! Shame on you! Aren't you going to help Suellen down?”
Frank hastened to his duty. With a polite nod to his host, Rhett withdrew to a quiet corner of the veranda. He wished he hadn't come.
Twelve Oaks buzzed like a honeybee swarm on its mating flight.
There'd be marriages made today and doubtless a scandal or two. Swirling through the floral and Parisian perfumes, amid the gaiety, flirting, and jests was romance, as fresh as if no man or maid had experienced romance before.
Rhett's eyes fell on a very young woman in a green dancing frock and his heart surged. "Dear God," he whispered.
She wasn't a great beauty: her chin was pointed and her jaw had too much strength. She was fashionably pale — ladies never exposed their skin to the brutal sun — and unusually animated. As Rhett watched, she touched a young buck's arm both intimately and carelessly.
When the girl felt Rhett's gaze she looked up. For one scorching second, her puzzled green eyes met his black eyes before she tossed her head dismissively and resumed her flirtation.
Forgotten the looming War. Forgotten the devastation he expected.
Hope welled up in Rhett Butler like a healing spring. "My God." Rhett moistened dry lips. "She's just like me!”
His heart slowed. He looked away, smiling at himself. It had been a long time since he'd made a fool of himself over a woman.
Rhett followed his nose around the plantation house to the barbecue where, scattered under shade trees, picnic tables were draped with Belgian linen and laid with English silver and French china. He took a seat at a half-empty table and a servant delivered Rhett's plate and glass of wine.
When his thoughts circled back to that girl he shook his head and drank a second glass of wine.
Although the pork had a deep, smoky flavor and the potato salad was a perfect admixture of tart and sweet, two drunk young bucks at the foot of the table were glowering at the stranger, and before long they'd make a remark that couldn't be overlooked. Rhett refused dessert and decamped to the shade of a venerable black walnut tree to light a cigar. When John Wilkes joined him, Rhett complimented his host. "Hospitality like yours, sir, stops at the Mason-Dixon line. Hospitality cannot survive Yankee winters.
"You are too kind. Mr. Kennedy tells me you've been up north recently.”
"Yes, sir.”
"Will they fight?”
"They will. Abraham Lincoln won't show a white flag.”
"But surely, our brave young men ...”
"Mr. Wilkes, I am a stranger and you welcomed me to your home. I believe that defines the Good Samaritan. I am grateful, sir.”
"Too grateful to tell your host what you think of Confederate prospects?”
"Mr. Kennedy says you have a fine library. Perhaps, later, you can show it to me.”
That girl — the green-eyed girl in the dancing frock — had seated herself among her beaux, and her rosewood ottoman might have been a throne.
She was a princess; no, a young queen among favored cavaliers. The girl was responding too eagerly to compliments and jests, almost as if she were an ingenue overplaying her first big part.
"Fiddle-dee-dee!" she derided an admirer's inept sally.
Despite Suellen O'Hara's obvious dismay, Frank Kennedy was fetching this girl dainties — although any of Wilkes's servants could have performed that humble chore. Rhett half expected the man to kneel.
Wilkes followed Rhett's eyes. "Scarlett O'Hara. Beautiful, isn't she?”
"Scarlett," Rhett savored the name. "Yes, she is.”
"I'm afraid our Scarlett's a heartbreaker.”
"She's never met a man who understood her.”
Wilkes misread Rhett's intensity and frowned, "Aren't beaux and balls what a young lady should concern herself with? Would you rather Scarlett trouble her pretty head with war and armies and politics?”
"I hope to God she'll never need to," Rhett replied. "There are worse things than beauty and innocence.”
"My son, Ashley, has enlisted." Wilkes indicated a slender young man seated cross-legged beside the girl who must be his fiancée. Ashley Wilkes was his father's son: tall, gray-eyed, and blond with an aristocrat's confident grace. His fiancée laughed prettily at some private jest.
Wilkes unburdened himself with this stranger precisely because Rhett was a stranger. "Some of my acquaintances — influential, far-seeing men — are exiling their sons to Europe.”
"Mr. Wilkes, there are no good decisions left to us, only painful ones.”
Wilkes sighed heavily, "I suppose you're right." He became the host again with "Excuse me. I believe the Tarleton twins have lingered too long at the brandy cask.”
Scarlett flirted, demurely accepted each compliment, flattered outrageously and, from time to time, beneath lowered eyelids Miss O'Hara cast glances at ... young Wilkes? Oh yes, she did. And Rhett caught her doing it.
Whispering confidences to an admirer, Scarlett looked past the man's shoulder to Wilkes. When she caught Rhett's eye again Rhett laughed. Because he understood. Oh yes, he did. The heartbreaker was using the besotted males to make Ashley Wilkes jealous. For Wilkes's sake, she'd bewitched every available male — as well as some, like Frank Kennedy, who weren't as available as they might have wished.
Apparently the heartbreaker was heartsick for another woman's prize.
Poor, lovely, unhappy child!
At Rhett's laughter, Scarlett O'Hara flushed to her roots before refuting among her admirers.
It was inevitable. Some fool would mention the unmentionable, what every person here was trying to ignore. The fatal words "Fort Sumter”
were uttered and the romantic languor of a spring afternoon vanished like a dream.
"We'll whip the Yanks in a month," one gallant promised.