“Back Joe went to Virginia the next day,” Gerald added hastily. “There was no visiting about and dancing afterwards. The Tarleton twins are home.”
“We heard that. Have they recovered?”
“They weren’t badly wounded. Stuart had it in the knee and a minie ball went through Brent’s shoulder. You had it, too, that they were mentioned in dispatches for bravery?”
“No! Tell us!”
“Hare brained — both of them. I’m believing there’s Irish in them,” said Gerald complacently. “I forget what they did, but Brent is a lieutenant now.”
Scarlett felt pleased at hearing of their exploits, pleased in a proprietary manner. Once a man had been her beau, she never lost the conviction that he belonged to her, and all his good deeds redounded to her credit.
“And I’ve news that’ll be holding the both of you,” said Gerald. They’re saying Stu is courting at Twelve Oaks again.”
“Honey or India?” questioned Melly excitedly, while Scarlett stared almost indignantly.
“Oh, Miss India, to be sure. Didn’t she have him fast till this baggage of mine winked at him?”
“Oh,” said Melly, somewhat embarrassed at Gerald’s outspokenness.
“And more than that, young Brent has taken to hanging about Tara. Now!”
Scarlett could not speak. The defection of her beaux was almost insulting. Especially when she recalled how wildly both the twins had acted when she told them she was going to marry Charles. Stuart had even threatened to shoot Charles, or Scarlett, or himself, or all three. It had been most exciting.
“Suellen?” questioned Melly, breaking into a pleased smile. “But I thought Mr. Kennedy —”
“Oh, him?” said Gerald. “Frank Kennedy still pussyfoots about, afraid of his shadow, and I’ll be asking him his intentions soon if he doesn’t speak up. No, ‘tis me baby.”
“Carreen?”
“She’s nothing but a child!” said Scarlett sharply, finding her tongue.
“She’s little more than a year younger than you were, Miss, when you were married,” retorted Gerald. “Is it you’re grudging your old beau to your sister?”
Melly blushed, unaccustomed to such frankness, and signaled Peter to bring in the sweet potato pie. Frantically she cast about in her mind for some other topic of conversation which would not be so personal but which would divert Mr. O’Hara from the purpose of his trip. She could think of nothing but, once started, Gerald needed no stimulus other than an audience. He talked on about the thievery of the commissary department which every month increased its demands, the knavish stupidity of Jefferson Davis and the blackguardery of the Irish who were being enticed into the Yankee army by bounty money.
When the wine was on the table and the two girls rose to leave him, Gerald cocked a severe eye at his daughter from under frowning brows and commanded her presence alone for a few minutes. Scarlett cast a despairing glance at Melly, who twisted her handkerchief helplessly and went out, softly pulling the sliding doors together.
“How now, Missy!” bawled Gerald, pouring himself a glass of port. “ ‘Tis a fine way to act! Is it another husband you’re trying to catch and you so fresh a widow?”
“Not so loud, Pa, the servants —”
“They know already, to be sure, and everybody knows of our disgrace. And your poor mother taking to her bed with it and me not able to hold up me head. ‘Tis shameful. No, Puss, you need not think to get around me with tears this time,” he said hastily and with some panic in his voice as Scarlett’s lids began to bat and her mouth to screw up. “I know you. You’d be flirting at the wake of your husband. Don’t cry. There, I’ll be saying no more tonight, for I’m going to see this fine Captain Butler who makes so light of me daughter’s reputation. But in the morning — There now, don’t cry. ‘Twill do you no good at all, at all. ‘Tis firm that I am and back to Tara you’ll be going tomorrow before you’re disgracing the lot of us again. Don’t cry, pet. Look what I’ve brought you! Isn’t that a pretty present? See, look! How could you be putting so much trouble on me, bringing me all the way up here when ‘tis a busy man I am? Don’t cry!”
Melanie and Pittypat had gone to sleep hours before, but Scarlett lay awake in the warm darkness, her heart heavy and frightened in her breast. To leave Atlanta when life had just begun again and go home and face Ellen! She would rather die than face her mother. She wished she were dead, this very minute, then everyone would be sorry they had been so hateful. She turned and tossed on the hot pillow until a noise far up the quiet street reached her ears. It was an oddly familiar noise, blurred and indistinct though it was. She slipped out of bed and went to the window. The street with its over-arching trees was softly, deeply black under a dim star-studded sky. The noise came closer, the sound of wheels, the plod of a horse’s hooves and voices. And suddenly she grinned for, as a voice thick with brogue and whisky came to her, raised in “Peg in a Low-backed Car,” she knew. This might not be Jonesboro on Court Day, but Gerald was coming home in the same condition.
She saw the dark bulk of a buggy stop in front of the house and indistinct figures alight. Someone was with him. Two figures paused at the gate and she heard the click of the latch and Gerald’s voice came plain.
“Now I’ll be giving you the ‘Lament for Robert Emmet.’ Tis a song you should be knowing, me lad. I’ll teach It to you.”
“I’d like to learn it,” replied his companion, a hint of buried laughter in his flat drawling voice. “But not now, Mr. O’Hara.”
“Oh, my God, it’s that hateful Butler man!” thought Scarlett, at first annoyed. Then she took heart. At least they hadn’t shot each other. And they must be on amicable terms to be coming home together at this hour and in this condition.
“Sing it I will and listen you will or I’ll be shooting you for the Orangeman you are.”
“Not Orangeman — Charlestonian.”
“ ‘Tis no better. ‘Tis worse. I have two sister-in-laws in Charleston and I know.”
“Is he going to tell the whole neighborhood?” thought Scarlett panic-stricken, reaching for her wrapper. But what could she do? She couldn’t go downstairs at this hour of the night and drag her father in from the street.
With no further warning, Gerald, who was hanging on the gate, threw back his head and began the “Lament,” in a roaring bass. Scarlett rested her elbows on the window sill and listened, grinning unwillingly. It would be a beautiful song, if only her father could carry a tune. It was one of her favorite songs and, for a moment, she followed the fine melancholy of those verses beginning:
“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps
And lovers are round her sighing.”
The song went on and she heard stirrings in Pittypat’s and Melly’s rooms. Poor things, they’d certainly be upset. They were not used to full-blooded males like Gerald. When the song had finished, two forms merged into one, came up the walk and mounted the steps. A discreet knock sounded at the door.
“I suppose I must go down,” thought Scarlett. “After all he’s my father and poor Pitty would die before she’d go.” Besides, she didn’t want the servants to see Gerald in his present condition. And if Peter tried to put him to bed, he might get unruly. Pork was the only one who knew how to handle him.
She pinned the wrapper close about her throat, lit her bedside candle and hurried down the dark stairs into the front hall. Setting the candle on the stand, she unlocked the door and in the wavering light she saw Rhett Butler, not a ruffle disarranged, supporting her small, thickset father. The “Lament” had evidently been Gerald’s swan song for he was frankly hanging onto his companion’s arm. His hat was gone, his crisp long hair was tumbled in a white mane, his cravat was under one ear, and there were liquor stains down his shirt bosom.
“Your father, I believe?” said Captain Butler, his eyes amused in his swarthy face. He took in her dishabille in one glance that seemed to penetrate through her wrapper.
“Bring him in,” she said shortly, embarrassed at her attire, infuriated at Gerald for putting her in a position where this man could laugh at her.
Rhett propelled Gerald forward. “Shall I help you take him upstairs? You cannot manage him. He’s quite heavy.”
Her mouth fell open with horror at the audacity of his proposal. Just imagine what Pittypat and Melly cowering in their beds would think, should Captain Butler come upstairs!
“Mother of God, no! In here, in the parlor on that settee.”
“The suttee, did you say?”
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Here. Now lay him down.”
“Shall I take off his boots?”
“No. He’s slept in them before.”
She could have bitten off her tongue for that slip, for he laughed softly as he crossed Gerald’s legs.
“Please go, now.”
He walked out into the dim hall and picked up the hat he had dropped on the doorsill.
“I will be seeing you Sunday at dinner,” he said and went out, closing the door noiselessly behind him.
Scarlett arose at five-thirty, before the servants had come in from the back yard to start breakfast, and slipped down the steps to the quiet lower floor. Gerald was awake, sitting on the sofa, his hands gripping his bullet head as if he wished to crush it between his palms. He looked up furtively as she entered. The pain of moving his eyes was too excruciating to be borne and he groaned.
“Wurra the day!”
“It’s a fine way you’ve acted, Pa,” she began in a furious whisper. “Coming home at such an hour and waking all the neighbors with your singing.”
“I sang?”
“Sang! You woke the echoes singing the ‘Lament.’ ”
“ ‘Tis nothing I’m remembering.”
“The neighbors will remember it till their dying day and so will Miss Pittypat and Melanie.”
“Mother of Sorrows,” moaned Gerald, moving a thickly furred tongue around parched lips. “ ‘Tis little I’m remembering after the game started.”
“Game?”
“That laddybuck Butler bragged that he was the best poker player in — ”
“How much did you lose?”
“Why, I won, naturally. A drink or two helps me game.”
“Look in your wallet.”
As if every movement was agony, Gerald removed his wallet from his coat and opened it. It was empty and he looked at it in forlorn bewilderment.
“Five hundred dollars,” he said. “And ‘twas to buy things from the blockaders for Mrs. O’Hara, and now not even fare left to Tara.”
As she looked indignantly at the empty purse, an idea took form in Scarlett’s mind and grew swiftly.
“I’ll not be holding up my head in this town,” she began. “You’ve disgraced us all.”
“Hold your tongue, Puss. Can you not see me head is bursting?”
“Coming home drunk with a man like Captain Butler, and singing at the top of your lungs for everyone to hear and losing all that money.”
“The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman. He —”
“What will Mother say when she hears?”
He looked up in sudden anguished apprehension.
“You wouldn’t be telling your mother a word and upsetting her, now would you?”
Scarlett said nothing but pursed her lips.
“Think now how ‘twould hurt her and her so gentle.”
“And to think, Pa, that you said only last night I had disgraced the family! Me, with my poor little dance to make money for the soldiers. Oh, I could cry.”
“Well, don’t,” pleaded Gerald. “ ‘Twould be more than me poor head could stand and sure ‘tis bursting now.”
“And you said that I —”
“Now Puss, now Puss, don’t you be hurt at what your poor old father said and him not meaning a thing and not understanding a thing! Sure, you’re a fine well-meaning girl, I’m sure.”
“And wanting to take me home in disgrace.”
“Ah, darling, I wouldn’t be doing that. ‘Twas to tease you. You won’t be mentioning the money to your mother and her in a flutter about expenses already?”
“No,” said Scarlett frankly, “I won’t, if you’ll let me stay here and if you’ll tell Mother that ‘twas nothing but a lot of gossip from old cats.”
Gerald looked mournfully at his daughter.
“ ‘Tis blackmail, no less.”
“And last night was a scandal, no less.”
“Well,” he began wheedlingly, “we’ll be forgetting all that. And do you think a fine pretty lady like Miss Pittypat would be having any brandy in the house? The hair of the dog —”
Scarlett turned and tiptoed through the silent hall into the dining room to get the brandy bottle that she and Melly privately called the “swoon bottle” because Pittypat always took a sip from it when her fluttering heart made her faint — or seem to faint. Triumph was written on her face and no trace of shame for her unfilial treatment of Gerald. Now Ellen would be soothed with lies if any other busybody wrote her. Now she could stay in Atlanta. Now she could do almost as she pleased, Pittypat being the weak vessel that she was. She unlocked the cellaret and stood for a moment with the bottle and glass pressed to her bosom.
She saw a long vista of picnics by the bubbling waters of Peachtree Creek and barbecues at Stone Mountain, receptions and balls, afternoon danceables, buggy rides and Sunday-night buffet suppers. She would be there, right in the heart of things, right in the center of a crowd of men. And men fell in love so easily, after you did little things for them at the hospital. She wouldn’t mind the hospital so much now. Men were so easily stirred when they had been ill. They fell into a clever girl’s hand just like the ripe peaches at Tara when the trees were gently shaken.
She went back toward her father with me reviving liquor, thanking Heaven that the famous O’Hara head had not been able to survive last night’s bout and wondering suddenly if Rhett Butler had had anything to do with that.