Scarlett (44 page)

As Rhett had expected, Scarlett’s relations with the Mother Superior were far from simple. “She won’t say yes and she won’t say no and she doesn’t even listen when I try to explain the good sense of selling!” Scarlett complained after her first visit to the convent. And her second visit, third, fifth. She was baffled and frustrated. Rhett listened with kind, patient attention while she raged, keeping his laughter inside. He knew that he was the only person she had to talk to.

In addition, Scarlett’s efforts provided him with fresh delights almost daily as she escalated her assault on the Holy Mother Church. She began going to Mass every morning, confident that word of her devotion would get back to the convent. Then she started visiting Carreen so often that she learned the names of all the other nuns and almost half of the students. After a week of gentle, noncommittal responses from the Mother Superior, Scarlett was so desperate that she even began to accompany her aunts when they paid calls on friends of theirs who were also elderly Catholic ladies in straitened circumstances.

“I believe I’m wearing my rosary beads down to half their size, Rhett,” she exclaimed angrily. “How can that awful old woman be so mean?”

“Maybe she thinks this will save your soul,” Rhett suggested.

“Fiddle-dee-dee! My soul is just fine, thank you very much. It’s making me gag at the smell of incense, that’s what it’s doing, all this church stuff. And I look like a hag because I never get enough sleep. I do wish there wasn’t a big party every single night.”

“Nonsense. Those shadows under your eyes make you look spiritual. They must impress the Mother Superior enormously.”

“Oh! Rhett, what a horrid thing to say. I’ll have to go powder right this minute.”

In fact the lack of sleep was beginning to show on Scarlett’s face. And frustration was etching small vertical lines between her eyebrows. Everyone in old Charleston was talking about what they assumed to be some kind of religious fervor. Scarlett was a different person. At receptions and balls she was polite but abstracted. The belle-temptress had retired. She no longer accepted invitations to play whist, and she’d stopped calling on the ladies at whose at-home days she had become a fixture. “I’m all in favor of honoring God,” Sally Brewton said one day. “I even give up something I really love for Lent. But I think Scarlett’s going too far. It’s extravagant.”

Emma Anson disagreed. “It makes me think much better of her than I did before. You know I thought you were foolish to sponsor her the way you did, Sally. She was obviously an ignorant, vain little climber. Now I’m willing to eat my words. There’s something admirable about anyone with serious religious feelings. Even Popish ones.”

Wednesday morning in the second week of Scarlett’s siege was dark and cold and rainy. “I just can’t walk all the way to the convent through this downpour,” she moaned, “I’ll ruin my only pair of boots.” She thought with longing of the Butlers’ former coachman, Ezekiel. He had showed up, like a magical genie from a bottle, on the two rainy nights they were going out. All this Charleston pretense is crazy and disgusting, but I’d be glad to put up with it today if I could just ride in a nice warm dry carriage. But I can’t. And I have to go, so I will.

“Mother Superior left this morning early to go to Georgia for a meeting at the Order’s school there,” said the nun who opened the convent’s door. No one knew exactly how long the meeting would last. Perhaps one day, or several, or maybe a week or more.

I don’t have a week or more, Scarlett shouted inwardly, I can’t even afford to waste a day.

She plodded back to the house through the rain. “Throw away these damned boots,” she ordered Pansy. “And get me out some dry clothes.”

Pansy was even more soaked than she was. With an ostentatious fit of pitiful coughing, she limped off to do Scarlett’s bidding. I should take a strap to that girl, Scarlett said to herself, but she was more heartsick than angry.

The rain stopped in the afternoon. Miss Eleanor and Rosemary decided to go up to King Street shopping. Scarlett didn’t even want to do that. She sat in her room brooding until the walls seemed to be closing in on her, then she went downstairs to the library. Maybe Rhett would be there to provide some sympathy. She couldn’t talk to anyone else about her frustration because she hadn’t told anyone else what she was doing.

“How goes the reformation of the Catholic Church?” he asked, raising one eyebrow.

She burst into an angry account of the Mother Superior’s flight. He made sympathetic noises while he cut and lit a thin cigar. “I’m going out onto the piazza to smoke,” he said when it was glowing to his satisfaction. “Come out and get some air. The rainstorm brought summer back again; it’s very warm now that it’s blown out to sea.”

The sunlight was dazzling after the dim interior of the dining room. Scarlett shaded her eyes, breathing in the damp green smell of the garden and the salt tang of the harbor and the pungent masculinity of cigar smoke. Suddenly she was acutely aware of Rhett’s presence. She was so disturbed that she walked away several paces, and his voice when he spoke seemed to come from a great distance.

“I believe that the school the Sisters have in Georgia is in Savannah. You might go down after the Saint Cecilia for your grandfather’s birthday. Your aunts have been nagging you enough. If it’s an important Church meeting the Bishop will be there; perhaps you’ll have better luck with him.”

Scarlett tried to think about Rhett’s suggestion, but she couldn’t concentrate. Not with him so near. Strange to feel so shy when lately they’d been so comfortable together. He was leaning against one of the columns, placidly enjoying his smoke.

“I’ll see,” she said, and she left in a rush, before she began to cry.

What on earth is wrong with me? she thought as tears streamed from her eyes. I’m turning into a spineless cry-baby, just the kind of creature I despise. So what if it takes a little longer to get what I want? I will have Tara… and Rhett, too, if it takes a hundred years.

I
have never been so annoyed in all my long years,” said Eleanor Butler. Her hands were shaking when she poured the tea. A crushed thin paper sheet was on the floor near her feet. The telegram had arrived while she and Rosemary were out shopping: Cousin Townsend Ellinton and his wife were coming down from Philadelphia to visit.

“Two days’ notice!” Eleanor exclaimed. “Can you credit it? You’d think they’d never heard of the War.”

“They’ll be staying in a suite at the Charleston Hotel, Mama,” Rhett said soothingly, “and we’ll take them to the Ball. It won’t be too bad.”

“It will be awful,” said Rosemary. “I don’t see any reason we have to put ourselves out to be nice to Yankees.”

“Because they’re our kin,” said her mother severely. “And you will be extremely nice. Besides, your Cousin Townsend isn’t a Yankee at all. He fought with General Lee.”

Rosemary frowned and was silent.

Miss Eleanor began to laugh. “I must stop complaining,” she said. “It’ll be worth it in the long run to see Townsend and Henry Wragg meet each other. Townsend’s cross-eyed, and Henry’s walleyed. Do you suppose they’ll be able to manage to shake hands?”

*   *   *

The Ellintons weren’t so bad, Scarlett thought, even though you didn’t know where to look when you talked to Cousin Townsend. His wife Hannah wasn’t as beautiful as Miss Eleanor had predicted, which was agreeable. However, her pearl-sewn ruby brocade ball gown and diamond dog-collar made Scarlett feel miserably frumpy in her tired claret velvet and camellias. Thank Heaven this was the last ball, and the end of the Season.

I would have called anybody a liar if they’d said I could ever get tired of dancing, but I’ve had more than my fill. Oh, if only everything was settled about Tara! She had followed Rhett’s advice, she’d thought about going to Savannah. But the prospect of day after day with her aunts was more than she could bear, and she had decided to wait for the Mother Superior’s return to Charleston. Rosemary was going to visit Miss Julia Ashley, so that thorn would be out of her flesh. And Miss Eleanor was always good company.

Rhett was going to the Landing. She wouldn’t think about that now. If she did, she’d never be able to get through the evening.

“Do tell, Cousin Townsend,” Scarlett said brightly, “all about General Lee. Is he really as handsome as everybody says?”

Ezekiel had polished the carriage and groomed the horses until they looked fit to carry royalty. He stood by the carriage block, holding the door open, ready to assist if needed when Rhett helped his ladies to step up into the carriage.

“I still say that the Ellintons should be riding with us,” Eleanor stewed.

“We’d be squashed to death,” Rosemary grumbled. Rhett told her to be quiet.

“There’s nothing to fret about, Mama,” he said. “They’re directly in front of us in the finest rig Hannah’s money can rent. When we get to Meeting Street we’ll pass them so we can be there first to escort them in. There’s nothing whatsoever to worry about.”

“There’s plenty, and you know it, Rhett. Yes, they’re nice people and Townsend’s kin, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Hannah’s a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee. I’m afraid she’ll be polited to death.”

“Be what?” asked Scarlett.

Rhett explained. Charlestonians had a particularly vicious and cunning game, developed after the War. They treated outsiders with so much graciousness and consideration that their politeness became a weapon. “Visitors end up feeling as if they’re wearing shoes for the first time in their lives. It’s said that only the strongest ever recover from the experience. I hope we won’t be treated to a display of it tonight. The Chinese never developed a torture to match it, although they’re a very subtle people.”

“Rhett! Please stop,” begged his mother.

Scarlett said nothing. That’s what they’ve been doing to me, she thought grimly. Well, let them. I don’t have to put up with Charleston much longer.

After the turn onto Meeting Street the carriage moved into place at the end of a long line of carriages. One by one they stopped to release passengers, then slowly moved on. It’ll be over before we get there at this rate, Scarlett thought. She looked out the window at people walking, the ladies followed by their maids carrying their slipper bags. I wish we’d walked, too. It would be lovely to be out in the warm air instead of cooped up in this stuffy little space. She was startled by the sharp clanging of a streetcar bell to their left.

How can there be a streetcar running? she wondered. They always stopped at nine o’clock. She heard the bells from St. Michael’s steeple ring two full rounds. It was half past.

“Isn’t it nice to see the streetcar with nobody on it but people dressed for a ball?” said Eleanor Butler. “Did you know, Scarlett, that they always stop running the cars early on the night of the Saint Cecilia so they can scrub them out before they make the special runs to take people to the ball?”

“I didn’t know that, Miss Eleanor. How do people get home?”

“Oh, they run another special at two when the ball’s over.”

“What if somebody wants to ride who isn’t going to the ball?”

“They can’t, of course. Nobody would even think of it. Everybody knows the cars don’t run after nine o’clock.”

Rhett laughed. “Mama, you sound like the duchess in
Alice in Wonderland
.”

Eleanor Butler began to laugh, too. “I suppose I do,” she sputtered cheerfully, then laughed even harder.

She was still laughing when the carriage moved forward and stopped and the door was pulled open. Scarlett looked out onto a scene that made her catch her breath. This was the way a ball should be! Tall black iron poles held a pair of enormous lanterns brightly lit with a half dozen gas jets. They illuminated the deep portico and towering white columns of a temple-like building set back from the street behind a tall iron fence. A gleaming white canvas walkway led from the scoured white marble carriage block to the portico’s steps. Over walkway and block a white canvas awning had been erected.

“Just think,” she said, marvelling, “you could go from your carriage to the Ball in the pouring rain and not a drop of water would touch you.”

“That’s the idea,” Rhett agreed, “but it’s never been tested. It never rains on the night of the Saint Cecilia. God wouldn’t dare.”

“Rhett!” Eleanor Butler was genuinely shocked.

Scarlett smiled at Rhett, pleased that he could make fun of something that he took as seriously as this ball. He’d told her all about it, how many years and years it had been going on—everything in Charleston seemed to have been around for at least a hundred years—how it was completely run by men. Only men could be members of the Society.

“Step down, Scarlett,” said Rhett, “you should feel right at home here. This building is the Hibernian Hall. Inside you’ll see a plaque with the harp of Ireland in best gold paint.”

“Don’t be rude,” scolded his mother.

Scarlett stepped out with her pugnacious chin—so like her Irish father’s—held high.

What were those Yankee soldiers doing? Scarlett’s throat contracted with momentary fear. Were they planning to cause trouble because they’d been beaten by the ladies before? Then she saw the crowds behind them, eager faces bobbing from side to side in an effort to see the figures emerging from the carriages. Why, the Yankees are holding people back to make a path for us! Just like servants, like the torch boys or the footmen. Serves them right. Why don’t they just give up and go away? Nobody pays them any mind anyhow.