Rhett Butler's People

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A Georgia Plantation

After the War Charleston surrendered, Columbia burned, Petersburg fell, Richmond burned; the Confederate armies surrendered. It was finished. After four bitter years, the war was over. From the Potomac to the Rio Brazos, grass softened the abandoned earthworks, skeletons of men and horses vanished beneath new growth, and by June's end, when the grass slumped in the heat, only burned plantation houses, shattered cities, and broken hearts testified to what had happened to the South. That spring, the songbirds' bright chittering fell on ears still tensed for the thunder of guns. Gaunt survivors of once-feared armies laid down their weapons and started their weary walk home.

With her moistened fingertip, Scarlett O'Hara Hamilton captured the last crumb of corn bread on her plate. "Mammy, we must give smaller portions to the vagrants.”

Plates clattering angrily as the old servant carried them to the kitchen, Mammy grumbled, "Tara ain't never turned folks away hungry, and these boys ain't no vagrants; they's soldier boys!”

Though Tara was off the beaten track, those soldier boys arrived daily.

"Jest passing through, ma'am. I'm a-goin' home. Got young'uns I ain't seed since '63. Hope they remember their old pappy." Last night, an Alabama boy had slept on Taras parlor floor and breakfasted on corn bread before leaving. Tara's remaining cornmeal — seven precious pounds — was locked up in Gerald O'Hara's liquor cabinet.

Tara's dining room wallpaper had been jerked away in strips by Sherman's bummers searching for valuables. Some of the mismatched chairs around the dining room table were wired together. "I'ze no cabinetmaker, Miss Scarlett," Pork had explained. "I'ze Master Gerald's valet.”

Melanie rose from her chair. "I'm a little tired. If you don't mind terribly, I'll lie down until we hill the potatoes. Scarlett, dear, you will wake me? At Scarlett's terse nod, Melanie produced her sweetest smile. "If you won't call me, dear, I won't be able to rest. You can't do it all by yourself.”

"Why, of course I'll wake you," Scarlett lied, kissing her sister-in-law's cheek.

The Yankees wouldn't steal anything more. Tara had nothing left to steal. Of its hundred beef and milk cows, two hundred hogs, forty horses and mules, fifty sheep, and countless chickens and turkeys; one horse, one milk cow, one cranky elusive sow, and two elderly hens survived. What the Yankees hadn't killed, they'd stolen.

Tara's field workers — even dependable negroes like Big Sam — had run off. Only the house servants — Pork, Mammy, Dilcey, and Prissy — were still at Tara, and sometimes Scarlett wished they'd run too. Four more mouths to feed.

In her dawn-to-dark fight to keep Tara alive, even Ashley Wilkes had faded from Scarlett's mind. She didn't know whether Ashley had died in the Federal prison camp, as so many had, or would be coming home one day. Most nights, Scarlett managed a brief prayer for Ashley before her exhausted mind succumbed to sleep. Some nights she forgot.

A year ago when Rhett Butler abandoned her outside burning Atlanta, Scarlett had been running to her childhood Tara, where her Mammy would warm some milk and her mother, Ellen, would lay cool cloths on her brow. War's terrors would be banished as Scarlett fell into her mother's loving arms.

Her dream had been short-lived.

One day before Scarlett got home — one irrecoverable day — Scarlett's mother, Ellen, had died of fever. Ellen died with a man's name on her lips: Philippe — a French name.

Now there was nobody left on earth who could teach Scarlett how to live. "Philippe"? She didn't know any Philippe and she had more important things to worry about.

Sometimes, Scarlett believed Gerald O'Hara should have died with his wife. Scarlett's father was a shell of the shrewd, impetuous, sturdy man he'd been. Though Gerald still sat at the head of the table and ate his meager portion without complaint, her father's mind was broken.

Now he rose. "I think I'll rest now, my dear. This afternoon, your mother and I are riding to Twelve Oaks.”

"That will be nice," Scarlett said, though John Wilkes was long dead and Twelve Oaks burned to the ground.

Scarlett kept up the pretense because pretense was better than Gerald O'Hara's lucid moments, when he remembered everything he had lost and crumpled in paroxysms of weeping.

Little Wade drummed his heels against his chair rungs, whining he was still hungry. "Wade, you'll just have to wait. When Mammy bakes corn bread, you can have the bowl.”

Scarlett tied her bonnet before going outdoors, where Pork waited, wearing the cast-off Sunday coat Gerald had given him years ago. Tightlipped with determination, Pork began, "Miss Scarlett!”

Pork's too-familiar complaint rolled over her: "Miss Scarlett, when my old master tried to buy me back from Master Gerald, he offered eight hundred dollars, which was right smart of money in them days. Yes, Miss, it were! Master Gerald wouldn't take no money for me account of I'ze Master Gerald's personal valet. I ain't one to brag on myself, but some folks say I is the best valet in Clayton County. And I ain't gonna hill no potatoes!”

"Pork," Scarlett restrained her temper, "if a strong man like you won't help, how can we women do the work?”

Out of the corner of her eye Scarlett spotted her sister leading their only horse to the mounting block. "Suellen! Suellen! Wait!”

Suellen was wearing her good dress and had a plump white peony in her thin, lifeless hair. "Suellen, where are you going?”

"Why, I'm going to Jonesboro, Sister dear. It's Tuesday.”

Frank Kennedy had been Suellen's "intended" for years. Although his Jonesboro store had been destroyed, every Tuesday Frank brought dry goods and groceries from Atlanta to swap for eggs, butter, honey, and whatever small family treasures the Federals had overlooked.

"Suellen, I'm sorry, but we need the horse today. Dilcey knows where the Yankees threw away a barrel of weevily flour. Think how good biscuits would taste!”

Suellen threw her peony in the dirt as she stalked indoors.

Scarlett held her tongue.

The Yankees had burned $200,000 of Gerald O'Hara's stored cotton.

A few months later, they returned to burn the tiny crop Scarlett had gleaned: perhaps $2,000. A month before the Confederate surrender, Scarlett had replanted. If this year's scant crop survived weevils and bindweed, come fall it might fetch $200: A fortune.

Before the War, Scarlett believed only imprudent people ate their seed corn. Now she understood the bitter truth that people ate their seed corn and their seed potatoes and made bread of their wheat seed when they were hungry enough. Scarlett was thankful Tara's people couldn't eat cotton seed!

Scarlett grieved each time they had to butcher one of their sow's thirty pound shoats — a shoat who in time would have become a three-hundred pound hog!

Pretty Scarlett was stark-featured with fatigue; gay Scarlett was always cross. Proud Scarlett would do anything — literally anything — for Tara and its people. Gerald O'Hara's daughter did work she'd never dreamed of.

Scarlett had hoed until blisters came and weeded until pigweed tore her blisters open. She'd worked until her back and shoulders ached. Scarlett had lost so much weight, she fit into dresses she'd last worn when she was thirteen. The woman who'd come home to Tara to be a child again had become its mistress, distributing food, disarming squabbles, tending the sick, encouraging the weary.

She tied the horse and turned to Pork. "Pork, if you can't hill potatoes, perhaps you'd grease the windlass.”

As if explaining to a child, Pork said, "Miss Scarlett, I'ze Master Gerald's valet...”

Scarlett felt heat at the roots of her hair. She smiled sweetly and said, "I wonder if some other Clayton County family might need a valet.”

Pork shook his head sadly. "Miss Scarlett, why you so hard?”

Why? Why? If Scarlett hesitated, if she lost heart, if she once — as she sometimes wished to — broke down and wept, everything would be lost.

Pork ambled off on a vague search for some kind of grease for the windlass.

Gerald O'Hara's thousand-acre plantation had shrunk to a hundred foot kitchen garden and one five-acre cotton patch. Scarlett squinted so she wouldn't see the brambles and blackberry bushes encroaching.

Scarlett did servant's work and she ate servant's food: chickweed, dry land cress, dandelion greens, and wild mustard. Scarlett stooped in the shade of a live oak where the poke hadn't bolted yet. They'd have poke greens for supper.

A stranger was riding up their lane on a donkey so small, the rider's boot tips brushed the ground. His ill-fitting green civilian coat was new, his beard was short, and his whitish blond hair a stubble. He had more flesh on him than the paroled soldiers who came to Tara. At the foot of the final rise, his donkey stopped, stretched its neck, pointed its muzzle to the skies, and brayed. The rider waited, slack-reined, until the donkey exhausted its complaints.

Judging by his new coat, the man was a Carpetbagger; though not a prosperous one.

Though the rider might have made quicker progress leading his donkey, he rode the disgruntled beast to Scarlett's feet. "Nice morning," he observed.

"If you're a Carpetbagger, sir, you are not welcome.”

This jerked a startled laugh from him. "Carpetbagger, ma'am? Madam, I have sinned grievously, but that particular sin has eluded me. Might I water my steed?”

Scarlett pointed to the well.

The ungreased windlass squealed when the man turned the crank.

"Then you must be a Scalawag," Scarlett decided. "Nobody else wears new clothes.”

He poured water into a bucket for his donkey. "Your windlass needs lard," he said.

He peeled off his new coat and hung it on the windlass handle. With a quick jerk, he ripped a sleeve off. Broken threads fringed an empty armhole.

He stuffed the sleeve into his pocket before redonning his coat. "A 'Scalawag,' ma'am? One of those Southerners who were secret Union sympathizers — keeping their opinions to themselves until the Yankees were victorious? No, ma'am, I'm a convict released from the Ohio Penitentiary, issued these clothes and ten dollars, with which I bought this noble steed, Chapultapec.”

He patted the animal's haunch.

"That's a mighty fancy name for a donkey.”

His face was transfigured by his grin. "I am an incurable romantic. You don't recognize me?”

Scarlett frowned. "No ... I'm afraid I don't.”

"Perhaps if I wore a cavalry officer's hat with an egret plume? If I had a banjo player accompanying me? Surely, Miss Scarlett, you didn't have many callers who brought their own orchestra.”

Scarlett blinked. " Colonel Ravanel?”

He bowed deeply. "I had hoped you'd find me unforgettable.”

"You were that." Something tugged at Scarlett's memory. "Didn't I hear you'd lost your wife?”

"My Charlotte is with the angels.”

Scarlett's mind raced. When she'd met Charlotte Ravanel at Aunt Eulalie's, she'd thought her a worthy, uninteresting gentlewoman: a woman other women confide in. But Charlotte had been a Fisher: heir to one of the South's great fortunes. Doubtless, Charlotte Fisher's attic had its trunks of worthless Confederate currency, as Tara's did. But so much money couldn't all be gone. Scarlett smiled sadly, "Colonel, my condolences for your loss.”

Didn't Charlotte have a brother? "And Jamie Fisher?" Scarlett asked.

"Jamie and I shared a cell. 'Eat your oatmeal, Andrew! Do take some fresh air! Andrew, you must not be bitter.' " Andrew Ravanel said, "Jamie couldn't understand how bitterness solaces a man.”

For her own part, Scarlett thought bitterness was like nostalgia: It got in the way of what needed doing. Feeding Tara's hungry people, restoring its house and outbuildings, hiring workers, buying livestock, and planting a thousand acres in cotton would leave no time for bitterness.

"Colonel Ravanel, you'll take supper with us?”

"Thank you, no. I couldn't.”

"My goodness, surely you're hungry?”

"I cannot pay.”

"Gracious!" Scarlett said. "If you must pay, sir, your supper will cost you one Confederate dollar!”

Pork was snipping roses in the dooryard. Every morning, fragrant bouquets appeared in the parlor, the dining room, and Gerald's bedroom.

"Pork, didn't I tell you to grease the windlass?”

"Yes, Miss Scarlett. I pick these flowers first.”

"The flowers are pretty, but every bucket is heavier because the windlass needs grease. When you're finished with that, start hilling the potatoes.”

Pork's lips were a rebellious pout.

"I hear the Yankees have banned the bullwhip," Andrew Ravanel observed mildly. "But your plantation is so far off the main roads ...”

Pork drew himself to his full height. "I ain't never been whipped! Master Gerald don't 'low no whippin' at Tara.”

The Colonel pulled the torn sleeve from his pocket and popped it against his pant leg.

Pork's mouth fell open and his roses dropped from his hand. In a dead voice, he said, "Yes, Miss Scarlett. I go grease the windlass." As she and the Colonel entered the front hall, Scarlett apologized. "I'm afraid Sherman's soldiers visited us.”

"My recent quarters, Miss Scarlett, were nothing to boast about.”

Scarlett showed the colonel into the dining room. "Excuse me, Colonel.

I'll see about your supper.”

She found Mammy kneeling on a stool, washing kitchen windows.

"Mammy, we'll want that corn bread, and there're poke greens under the live oak behind the well.”

"Miss Scarlett, this corn bread's for supper.”

"Mammy, the gentleman is our guest.”

"I seen that fellow through these windows." Mammy snorted. "What gentleman only got one sleeve to his coat?”

"He ruined his coat so he wouldn't be mistaken for a Scalawag.”

"He did what?" Mammy shook her head. "Lord have mercy!" She climbed down and went for the greens.

Scarlett raced up the servants' stairway to her bedroom. Her cracked mirror revealed a too-brown, unladylike face, but her hair was clean. She undid her bun and rearranged her hair to frame her face. She dabbed a drop of precious cologne behind each ear.

In nightshirt and riding boots, Gerald emerged from his bedroom.

"Have you seen Ellen?" he inquired anxiously. "We should be at Twelve Oaks by four. John will want to have a drink before we dine.”

"I'll remind her, Father. Please excuse me. I'm attending to a guest.”

"Shouldn't I greet him?”

"I shouldn't think so, Father. You don't want to tire yourself before your ride to Twelve Oaks.”

Gerald O'Hara waggled his finger, "Don't forget to remind your mother," and closed his door behind him.

When Scarlett returned to the dining room, Mammy was laying out food previously intended for everyone's supper.

Colonel Ravanel indicated his plate. "You are generous.”

"Goodness, Colonel. It's just a snack. Before the War, Taras hospitality was legendary.”

So she wouldn't stare at his overfull plate, Scarlett asked if the Colonel had passed through Atlanta.

"From Whitehall and Broad, I could not see a building standing." The Colonel's fork conveyed a stack of glistening greens to his mouth and he munched with a ruminant's mindless satisfaction. "The city center is destroyed.”

"The train station? The Car Shed?”

"The Yankees dragged straw inside and fired it. Whatever survived the fire was treated to explosives and battering rams." Ravanel's smile was hard.

"Only a Yankee General could make his reputation by burning an undefended city.”

Atlanta destroyed? Scarlett couldn't bear to think of it. Atlanta had energy and ingenuity by the bucketful. If Atlanta was destroyed, what hope was there for the South? The Colonel guessed Scarlett's thoughts. "They won't let us up. The Carpetbaggers and Scalawags are backed by Union bayonets. They mean whites to be ruled by niggers.”

Scarlett tried not to watch his fork scoop, wrap, and lift. It entered his mouth; his mouth closed. "If brave men like you are so discouraged, what can the rest of us do?”

"Men like me?" An ugly laugh. "Romantic fools tilting at windmills.”

He pushed his empty platter aside and wiped his mouth on that torn sleeve.

"I don't suppose you'd have brandy...”

"Only white liquor, I'm afraid.”

"Yes?”

"We use it medicinally.”

"I'm not as particular as I was.”

Scarlett went to the kitchen for the corn whiskey she kept hidden from Gerald. Mammy inquired, "Is the gentleman feeling poorly?”

The Fisher heir contentedly sipped corn liquor and smiled on Scarlett.

"It has been so long since I've been in any lady's company, let alone a handsome lady like yourself.”

Demurely, Scarlett lowered her eyes.

"Two long years ... I had nearly forgotten ... “

Scarlett couldn't remember when she'd had enough to eat.

"I regret our encounter ... that night in Atlanta. My unsought advice, dear Mrs. Hamilton: Never be an honored.. While fools are honoring you, you cannot escape them. When I came to your home, I was tired of fools, tired of myself, and I'd had too much to drink. Scarlett — I may call you Scarlett? You were the one bright moment that day, and for thanks, I insulted you. Please accept my apology." Ravanel chuckled reminiscently.

"'And take your orchestra with you!' “

Scarlett issued the invitation she'd issued to so many ragged, hungry strangers, but this time, she blushed. None of those strangers had been a Fisher heir. "Sir, you are welcome to stay at Tara tonight. Melanie Wilkes will be delighted to have your news. We've not heard from her husband.”

"He'll be alive," the Colonel said carelessly. "Men like Wilkes live forever.

Scarlett hid her wince. "If you've finished, I'd like to show you Tara.”

Tara had been Gerald O'Hara's dream.

Tara's whitewashed brick walls and broad roof would shelter the children, kinfolks, and guests enjoying Gerald's hospitality. "No too faraw”

Gerald had told his wife, Ellen. "Just a big comfortable farmhouse. I cannot abide drawing rooms and withdrawing rooms and private family rooms — for what is my house if not for my family?" When Ellen wanted a ballroom, Gerald snorted. "Won't we be dancing in our parlor, Mrs. O'Hara, anytime we have a mind to?”

Tara had no basement, because if Gerald O'Hara feared anything, it was snakes, and Gerald was certain basements harbored snakes.

Gerald wanted porches front and back — "where we can sit of a summer evening." Off the front bedroom would be Gerald's balcony, where Tara's proprietor could stand in the morning brightness, overlooking a lane bordered by chestnut saplings and red clay fields verdant with flowering cotton.

The leaded lights and semicircular fanlight framing the front door were Gerald's concession to his wife's notions.

If Gerald's house had been battered by the War, his plantation had been destroyed. "Our pecan trees bore the fattest nuts in Clayton County. The children's swing was here. The Yankees burned the pecans. They burned the swing, too, " Scarlett said.

"This is where the cotton press stood. My father always bought the most up-to-date machinery. 'Why should men do work dumb machines can do?' — that's what my father said.

"This was our dairy. See! That's the spring box beside that collapsed wall.

"As you see, they didn't burn the negro cabins.”

The Colonel kicked a charred board. "You'll need them when the niggers come to their senses. Thousands and thousands are sleeping in the streets of Atlanta. If the Yanks didn't feed them, they'd starve.”

What did Scarlett care about negro refugees? "With a thousand dollars, Tara could get back on its feet. Just a thousand. There's nothing wrong with the land; they can burn our buildings and kill our livestock, but, by God, they can't kill our land!”

"Aren't you the pretty Amazon." When Andrew Ravanel took Scarlett's hand, his convict's hand felt unpleasantly soft. "I dislike traveling alone," he said. "Can I convince you to accompany me to Charleston?”

Though Scarlett had expected an invitation, she'd not expected such a bold one. "An unmarried man and woman traveling together? Sir, what will people think?”

Ravanel's contemptuous laughter shocked her. "My dear Scarlett, they're dead. Everyone whose opinion mattered is dead. Only cowards, traitors, and ... convicts survived the war. Jeb Stuart — the lilies of the field bowed in homage when General Stuart rode by. Pious General Polk has taken his sermons to heaven, where he and Stonewall Jackson can preach to each other. Cleburne, Turner Ashby, brave little Pegram — my friend Henry Kershaw — that brave, dumb bastard — -even Rhett Butler is dead.”

Scarlett felt as if she'd been shot through the heart. She whispered, "Who?”

Colonel Ravanel picked up a crockery shard and flipped it into the ruined springhouse. "Rhett was in Fort Fisher when the Federals assaulted. It was a butcher's shambles." His voice lost its bitter edge. "Rhett and I were friends once. He was the best friend I ever had.”

"But Rhett... Rhett never believed in the Great Cause...”

"No, but he loved a gallant gesture." He eyed Scarlett curiously. "I'm surprised you knew him.”

Knew him? Knew him? Had she known him at all? Rhett Butler dead? He couldn't be dead!

"Now I've distressed you. I am sorry. I didn't know you knew Rhett.”

Scarlett's mind whirled. What had she thought? Certainly that she'd see him again, that Rhett's knowing, mocking smile would infuriate her again. She bit the inside of her lip so she wouldn't cry. Gone? Those rare moments when she and Rhett had understood each other — gone forever? "Where ... where is Rhett buried?”

"The Federals marked their soldiers' graves. They dumped ours in the ocean.”

It was as if she'd lost a part of herself: an arm, her hand, her heart.

Rhett Butler dead! Hopelessness washed over her and she sat heavily on the stump of what had been Tara's grandest chestnut tree. How could she go on? Numbly, she repeated, "Rhett Butler ... dead?”

Andrew Ravanel offered useless male consolations: Perhaps Rhett hadn't been killed with the others. Rhett was a cat. Rhett had nine lives...

Scarlett couldn't bear this man one moment longer. "Sir, please recall that I am Mrs. Charles Hamilton, a respectable widow. I decline your improper invitation. I cannot imagine what you were thinking of. Now, sir, you must go. You've made your intentions all too clear. You cannot remain at Tara.”

Softly he said, "Years ago, I loved him, too.”

"Love Rhett Butler? That arrogant, insulting, self-satisfied ... Why would anyone love Rhett Butler?”

"As you prefer.”

The tall man mounted his small mule and rode away.

The sun went behind a cloud.

Scarlett wanted to go upstairs and lie down. She felt so weak and helpless.

Lord, how she wanted to lie down.

Instead, she straightened and started for the potato patch. She and Pork would hill the potatoes. Then she would look for more poke greens.

Later, she would tell Melanie about Rhett. Melly had always favored him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE A Low Country Plantation

After the War Six months later, a horse and rider trotted down the Ashley River Road.

The horse was a coal black stallion, eleven hands high, of the breeding for which the Low Country had once been famous. The rider had the careless grace of a grandee. During the War, countless graves had been filled with men like him and the bones of their beautiful horses bleached in cornfields and peach orchards across the reunited nation.

One year ago, General Sherman's army had swarmed down this road.

Burned chimneys emerged like cautionary fingers out of the roadside brambles. This toppled gatepost led to the ruin that had been Henry Kershaw's boyhood home. From a swing suspended from that fire-blackened oak, little Charlotte Fisher had kicked her legs, shrieking, "Higher! Higher!

Oh, push me higher." This overgrown lane curved up to the burned mansion where Edgar Puryear's mother had died.

As the rider approached, two rail-thin pariah dogs slipped into the brush.

Across the river from Broughton Plantation, Rhett Butler pulled off his riding boots, socks, and trousers. He tied his boots to his saddle and wrapped his trouser legs over his stallion's eyes for a blindfold before he clucked the animal into the muddy river.

The horse forged across and clambered up Broughton's main trunk, where Rhett dressed.

The main trunk was covered with blackberry brambles and the rice fields were shallow tidal pools where squawking mud hens swam away from the intruder.

Deer and feral hogs had made trails through the untrimmed boxwood hedging Broughton's lane.

The carriage turnaround fronted a fire-streaked brick facade and window holes as empty as a skull's eye sockets. The front door yawned wide.

Among the furniture dragged outdoors and burned, Rhett recognized the walnut podium that had held the Butler family Bible.

Hummingbirds buzzed the trumpet vine invading the broken piazza.

Rhett stepped across the thick vines to the overlook where he'd stood twenty-five years ago. Rhett's memory of Broughton's symmetrical, productive rice fields overlay ruptured trunks and shimmering saline pools that no planter could ever crop again. "Yes, it was beautiful,'' Rhett murmured.

A voice quavered at his elbow. "Yes, sir. It t'were. Master 'n' Mistress Butler ain't receivin' callers no more.”

The aged negro supported himself on a gnarled driftwood cane. His eyes were filmed white.

"Good morning, Uncle Solomon," Rhett said.

"Young Master Rhett? That be you?" The old negro's fingers fluttered over Rhett's face. "We heard you was killed. Lord be praised! How do you fare, Young Master? You ain't been home in such a time!”

Rhett wished to see his parents if they still lived.

"Oh, yes. Master and Mistress still livin'." He lowered his voice. "Master Langston, he's got White Plague. He shrunk to a nubbin.

"All our niggers run off 'ceptin' me." Uncle Solomon tut-tutted. "Hercules and Sudie, they gone to town. Hercules say he won't work for no Butlers no more." The old man's lower lip quivered with indignation. "That nigger gettin' above hisself! I born on Broughton, lived all my days on Broughton, and Broughton Plantation be where I lie down.”

"Yes, Uncle. Then my parents are in town?”

"Town house blowed to bits! Nicest house on Meeting Street. None nicer! Market niggers used to call me 'Mr. Solomon' account of I come from that house. The Master and Mistress bidin' with Overseer Watling now.”

"Watling?”

"You been gone such a time, Master Rhett! Such a time! Master Langston said he wasn't leavin' Broughton no more. Your sister and her husband comes out sometimes. Miss Rosemary wants Master Langston and Mistress 'Lizabeth come stay with them. But you know how Master Langston be.”

"John Haynes is dead, Uncle. John died in the war.”

"Not Mr. Haynes. Colonel Ravanel, your sister's second husband.”

"Andrew Ravanel?”

"Yes, sir. Old Jack's boy. They say he was a hero in the War, but I don't know about that.”

"Andrew Ravanel?...”

"All the womens gettin' married. One day they widow, next day they wife, next day they carryin' a child...”

Isaiah Watling's home stood at the tip of a peninsula bounded by shallow tidal flats. Game chickens pecked in the yard. The ribby milk cow had a turpentine-soaked rag wrapped around her head to protect her from mosquitoes.

A young man was whittling, leaning back in a chair beside the front door. When Rhett tied his horse to the fence, the young man let his chair down with a thump. His pale blond hair was balding off his sloping forehead.

His nose was sharp and his eyes were so light, the pupils were almost invisible. An oiled revolver was stuck in his belt.

"Nice horse," he observed. The young man cut a long peel from his whittling stick. "Yankees got all the good horses these days." His grin lacked upper teeth and his right cheek was puckered by a scar. He answered Rhett's gaze. "I was yelling to Frank when I got shot. Spect you heard of Frank. Frank James's a heller." He tapped his scar. "Bill Quantrill said a man should keep his mouth shut, but sometimes it pays to have it open, don't it?”

He elaborated. "I mean, if I hadn't had my mouth open, that bullet would have took out my bottom teeth, too. I expect I'll get back with Frank and Jesse one day.”

"I am Rhett Butler. Are the Butlers here?”

"I reckon.”

"Suppose you could tell them I've come?”

The young man stood. "I'm Isaiah's nephew, Josie. I rode with Bill Quantrill until the Federals cut him down. They was figurin' to do me too, so I come east to renew family acquaintances." He winked. "Rhett Butler, Uncle Isaiah hates you like poison. I expect one day he'll take revenge on you. Waitin' on revenge is a hopeful thing, don't you think?”

Josie approached him as a pit dog approaches. "I known better men'n you killed for worse horses than that one.”

"Four years of war; aren't you tired of killing?”

Josie shrugged. "I been doin' folks since I was a sprout. Spect I got a taste for it.”

"If you're going to use that revolver, do. If not, tell the Butlers I'm here.”

"Ain't you the feisty son of a bitch." Without taking his eyes off Rhett, he shouted, "Uncle Isaiah! Feller's come!”

When he opened the door, Isaiah Watling shaded his eyes against the sun. "Young Butler. You are not welcome here.”

Josie Watling set a boot on a fence rail, crossed his arms, and grinned like a man who wasn't nearly as bored as he'd thought he'd be.

"Your home, Watling? Isn't this Broughton Plantation? Isn't this the Overseer's house? I'm here to see the Butlers.”

"You've no kin here.”

"Suppose you let us decide that.”

Isaiah Watling's hot eyes bored into Rhett's for a long moment before he wheeled and went inside.

"Nice day," Josie said. "Me, I always did like the fall of the year. You can see folks creepin' up better onct the leaves are gone." After a time, he added, "You ain't no talker, are you?" Josie Watling scratched his ear with the front sight of his revolver.

Isaiah Watling reappeared and jerked his head. Rhett followed him up the dimly remembered stairs of the house the Butlers had inhabited until their grand house was built. He entered the modest bedroom his parents had shared when he was a child. The room was neat. The floor had been swept. Medicine vials and a bowl of yellow sputum threaded with blood crowded the table beside the bed where Rhett Butler's father lay.

Langston Butler had been a big man and his bones still were. His skin was yellowish except for bright red spots on his cheeks. His curly brown hair was still without a streak of gray.

"You have the consumption," Rhett said.

"Have you come to tell me what I already know?”

"I've come to help. I can provide for you and Mother.”

Langston Butler wheezed and choked. His eyes bulged with outrage at his helplessness. He spat into the bowl beside the bed. "You will not disturb Elizabeth. My wife has Jesus Christ and the devoted Isaiah Watling. Why would Elizabeth Butler need you?”

"Sir, you agreed to see me. You must have had some reason.”

"You were said to be dead and I am more interested in resurrections than I was." The old man's smile was a ghastly slash. "Julian will inherit.

You will not attend my funeral.”

"Do you believe you can be Broughton's Master beyond the grave? Father...”

Langston Butler turned his face to the wall.

"I reckon you oughta git now," Josie Watling leaned against the door frame. "Uncle says I can shoot you if you don't do like the old rooster says.

I guess I could shoot you. I admire your horse.”

Isaiah Watling was in the yard.

"Watling, your daughter Belle is safe in Atlanta. Your grandson, Tazewell Watling, is in an English school. I have good reports of him.”

"Belle may yet repent," Isaiah said. "Thanks to you, my son Shadrach will never repent. Rhett Butler, you consigned Shadrach Watling to eternal damnation.”

Josie Watling hid his smile behind his hand. "Ain't he a heller?" he asked. "You ever see such a one?”

When Rhett rode down the lane between the flooded rice fields, he felt a spot burning between his shoulder blades — the same feeling he'd had when some Federal sharpshooter was drawing a bead.

A meandering path had been cleared down Charleston's Meeting Street, where whites combed through rubble for something to sell and negro gangs under Federal noncoms pulled down ruined walls. When Rhett went by, the men stopped working. A young negro called, "Bottom rail on top now, mister.”

Here and there, a house had been spared; here and there, an entire block. Forty-six Church Street's window glass was so new, the putty hadn't cured. The raw pine front door swung easily on new hinges when Rhett's sister, Rosemary, answered his knock.

Her face drained of color and she braced herself against the door frame.

"Rhett... you, you're not dead... Oh Rhett! My God, Brother!" Her smile was bright, but she was weeping. Rhett took her in his arms, murmuring into her hair until she pushed him away, dabbing her eyes. Rosemary asked, "Is it ungrateful to be astonished when prayers are answered?”

"I came nearer to shaking hands with Saint Peter than I liked. You didn't get my telegram?”

She shook her head.

"Then," Rhett grinned, "I'll have to be the answer to your prayers.”

"Oh Rhett! You haven't changed.”

"Little Sister, I understand congratulations are in order.”

"Congratulations?..." When Rosemary put her hand to her mouth, it was her mother's gesture.

"Congratulations, Mrs. Ravanel. May you be as happy as ... as happy can be.”

Rosemary led her brother inside. Some of the parlor furniture dated from her first marriage, but the love seat and sofa were new. "Sit, dear Brother, and I'll bring you something. Brandy?”

"Nothing now, thanks.”

"Please, Rhett. Don't be angry with me.”

"Angry? Why should I be angry?”

"Rhett, I ... I thought you were dead! Not one word!”

"I'm sorry. I telegraphed before I left for London. The Federals are after my money. Thus far, my banker, Rob Campbell, has fended them off, but meantime, Sister, I am in reduced circumstances.”

"John left me well provided for. If you need ...”

"I've enough cash for a time. And" — he fingered his lapels — "my credit is good with my tailor. Money is" — he shrugged — "merely money. I am sorry I worried you.”

She considered for a time before speaking plainly. "After John was killed, I didn't think I wanted to live. My child, my husband, and — I thought — I'd lost you, too." She touched Rhett's cheek. "You are real, aren't you?”

"Too real sometimes.”

"Then Andrew came back to Charleston. Two orphans in a storm.”

"Andrew always had a curious effect on women." Rhett raised one finger.

"Don't mistake me, Sister. Andrew was my friend, and for your sake, we will be friends again." Rhett smiled at the slight swelling of her belly. "I see I am to be an uncle again. I rather like that role. Uncles get to buy toys and accept the child's kisses, but when the child is fractious, uncles can ride away.”

"We need a child. Andrew ... Sometimes Andrew gets lost. Our child will bring him home." Rosemary cocked her head, "And you, Rhett? What of Miss Scarlett?”

"Who?”

"Rhett, this is Rosemary you're talking to!”

"That's finished. It ended one evening on the Jonesboro road. Love overwhelms us like a squall on the ocean and departs as swiftly as it came.”

"Urn.”

"No more remorse or confusion.”

"Urn.”

He frowned. "Why the smile, Sister? That oh-so-slightly condescending smirk?”

Rosemary laughed. "Because my big brother knows everything about everything but won't confess his own heart.”

Beneath his black hood, a Yankee daguerreotypist was immortalizing East Bay's dramatic ruins.

The Federal fleet lay at anchor inside the harbor. Captured blockade runners seemed embarrassed to be flying the Stars and Stripes.

Rhett was heading for the Haynes & Son offices when a shout intercepted him. "Hullo there, Rhett. Aren't you the bad penny?”

"Jamie Fisher, I'll be damned. The war didn't grow you taller.”

" 'Fraid not. Lord, it's good to see you." Jamie shook Rhett's hand.

"Come see what we've done to Grandmother's house. I've patched the roof myself. Aren't I the worker bee?”

The Fisher mansion's gray slate roof was spotted with black tarry repairs.

Jamie stuck his head inside the front door. "Juliet, Juliet — come see who's risen from the dead.”

Juliet Ravanel removed a dusty kerchief. "Why, Rhett Butler. Bless your black heart!" Juliet calculated the price of Rhett's suit. "Thank God the War didn't leave everyone a pauper!”

Jamie sighed. "My poor sister, Charlotte, put every penny of our money into Confederate bonds. To show faith in Andrew, I suppose." He paused.

"There was so much money. You'd think she'd have overlooked something”

Jamie spread his arms. "Rhett, standing before you is Charleston's most popular equestrian instructor. I teach the children of Yankee officers how not to fall off their ponies.”

"The Confederates' daring scout is in great demand," Juliet observed, smiling.

"I am strict with the parents because they expect strictness from a Daring Confederate Scout, but their children see right through me. They recognize another spoiled child when they see one!" With a flourish, Jamie ushered Rhett into the house. "Mind the top step, Rhett.”

They'd papered and painted the front hall and the circular staircase was polished to a soft cherry glow.

Jamie opened the drawing room door on a jumble of broken bricks, laths, and plaster, explaining, "We haven't begun on the downstairs. But three bedrooms are finished and rented to Carpetbaggers.”

"Gold," Juliet said with real feeling. "They pay in gold.”

"Your new brother-in-law says only traitors rent to Carpetbaggers.”

Jamie's face hardened, "By God, when Andrew finds solvent Confederates for our rooms, we'll put the Yankees into the street. Rhett, I fought beside Andrew. We shared a cell in that damned penitentiary. Rhett, it is difficult, so very difficult, to keep someone alive who does not wish to live.”

"Andrew has always been melancholy.”

"Andrew snubs me — and his sister, Juliet — in favor of the worst gang of 'patriots' who ever sharpened a bowie knife.”

"Ah," Rhett said. " 'Patriots.' I had hoped we were done with patriots.”

Juliet interrupted. "Enough about my silly brother. You remember Hercules; he and Sudie live above our kitchen house.”

Jamie's habitual cheerfulness returned. "Hercules mounted new wheels on a wrecked ambulance, painted his rig yellow and black, and Juliet stenciled 'For Hire' on the panels.”

"An excellent stencil it is, too," Juliet preened.

"In my grandfather's old beaver hat, Hercules is the perfect image of the antebellum Charleston cabbie. The Yankees ask Hercules where we hid our racehorses. When Hercules told one fellow that Chapultapec was last seen pulling a gun carriage, the man burst into tears. Rhett, surely you'll take tea with us?”

"I'd love to, but I'm off to congratulate my new brother-in-law.”

Juliet sniffed.

Rhett was mounting his horse when a carriage drove up and Jamie advised, "Here's Hercules now. Rhett, you really must admire his cab.”

Hercules helped a heavyset black woman to the sidewalk. "Mr. Rhett, we been searchin' everywhere for you. We heard you was back in the city.”

Ruthie Bonneau's dress was buttoned to the neck and her hair was confined by a dark hair net.

"Mr. Rhett," Hercules said. "I spect you know Mrs. Bonneau.”

"We are old friends." Rhett doffed his hat.

"Captain Butler," Ruthie Bonneau said, "I need your help. Tunis is in jail. They're going to murder my husband.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Bottom Rail on Top

Southerners who had detested and vilified Abraham Lincoln, even those who had greeted Lincoln's first election with secession, were appalled by his assassination. Whatever else Abraham Lincoln might have been, Southerners knew he was a forgiving man. Touring Richmond after the Confederate capital fell, Lincoln was asked what should be done with the defeated rebels. Lincoln had replied, "Let 'em up easy, boys. Let 'em up easy.”

Radical Republicans in Congress were not so inclined. Some had lost sons and brothers to rebel bullets; the influential Senator Charles Sumner had been beaten nearly to death by a Secessionist and Confederate raiders had burned Congressman Thaddeus Stevens's iron foundry to the ground. When Lincoln was murdered, these radicals took control of the United States government. They overrode President Andrew Johnson's vetoes, and when Johnson opposed them, they nearly had him impeached.

The Congress dismissed elected Southern governors and appointed Republicans. Many of the men thus installed were hacks, zealots, or both.

Congressman Thaddeus Stevens believed the victors should "Strip a proud nobility of their bloated estates, reduce them to a level with plain republicans; send them forth to labor, and teach their children to enter the workshops or handle the plough, and you will thus humble the proud traitors.”

Hordes of newly freed slaves flooded Southern cities. Northern missionaries flocked to a South that considered itself sufficiently Christian already, thank you. The Freedmen's Bureau fed ex-slaves, began educating them, and oversaw their labor contracts. Blue uniforms were everywhere.

Before the War, many Southern slave owners had honestly believed that their negroes were (never mind they might be sold in lean times) a part of their white Masters' families. Consequently, when negroes located buried family treasures for Sherman's bummers and abandoned their plantations en masse, these whites felt as if their beloved (though devious and slowwitted) children had betrayed them.

Carpetbaggers — some from Northern cities where hundreds of negroes had been lynched in wartime riots — rode in on moral high horses to teach Southerners how to treat the negro.

Southern Scalawags with no war record or prewar stature welcomed the Carpetbaggers with open arms.

Anyway, that's how Southern whites saw it.

Southern negroes were more apt to call this turn of events "bottom rail on top.”

Tunis Bonneau had stayed in Freeport until the blockade was lifted.

Three months after Abraham Lincoln died, the British steamer Garrick passed Fort Sumter — a rubble heap flying the largest Stars and Stripes Tunis Bonneau had ever seen.

The Garrick tied up at Government Wharf beside a troopship unloading discharged colored soldiers. These unafraid, skylarking negroes in blue uniforms stirred Tunis's hopes. In mortal combat, negroes had proved they were the white man's equal in courage and love of country. If negroes could be soldiers, why not citizens? Ruthie was working an oyster skiff. "Tunis, I couldn't just move back in with Mama and Papa. I'm Mrs. Bonneau!”

"The Merry Widow ..." Tunis began his confession.

"You hush up about that old boat." Ruthie kissed him.

From Ontario, Thomas Bonneau wrote, "Queen Victoria love her colored children same like she love her white children.”

Tunis thought they should go to Canada and start over.

Ruthie said Canada was too cold and too far. Her kinfolk were in the Low Country. And things were changing. Throughout the South, negroes were allying with sympathetic whites to agitate for negro rights.

"Why fight for rights from men who hate us when Canada got rights already?" Tunis said.

"This is my home, Tunis Bonneau," Ruthie replied. "I'd be sorrowful if we left.”

And that was that.

After Tunis delivered his oysters to the market, he washed up and walked to his father-in-law's church, where every evening negroes were shaping the new world a-borning.

Tunis and Reverend Prescott traveled to Atlanta where white Republicans like Rufus Bullock and negroes — most who'd been free coloreds before the war — were petitioning the United States Congress. Freedom elixir was in the air. Negroes stood at the gates of the Promised Land.

"Petitioning the United States Congress," Tunis said. "My, my.”

The Atlanta Journal described this meeting as "Cannibals and Carpetbaggers.”

Reverend Prescott was to preach in the city, so Tunis boarded the train home alone.

Twenty miles south, wheel bearings in the wood car went dry, and their train screeched and smoked into Jonesboro for repairs.

White passengers disembarked and went into the railroad hotel. Tunis found shade on the platform, sat beside his bag, and closed his eyes.

Two hundred miles from Charleston's wetlands, Tunis was dreaming about swamp grass parting for the bow as he poled through the shallows. It was such a pleasant dream, he didn't notice the white woman until she kicked his foot. Tunis opened his eyes and scrambled to his feet. "Ma'am?”

He removed his hat.

She was white and young. She'd had a few drinks. "Whew," she said, "you're a good-lookin' buck.”

"Thank you, Miss. I'm waitin' on the train be fixed.”

She shaded her eyes to inspect the station clock. "Won't be for a while.”

Tunis extracted his watch and consulted it. "Train be rollin' soon as they hitch up a wood car.”

"We got time," she said. "You want to have fun?”

"Ma'am?”

"You ain't stupid, are you?”

Tunis scratched his head, "Yes, ma'am. Reckon I is.”

When she stamped her foot, her bodice came undone.

"Why don't you kneel and tie up my lace?”

"Ma'am, nigger like me get in trouble touchin' a fine white lady like yourself.”

"Well, ain't we par-tic-u-lar? What if I said you could touch any part of me for a dollar?”

"Ma'am, I'ze a married man.”

"But all you niggers — all you niggers want to get a white woman alone and take off her clothes and do things to her. Don't you?”

"Nom.”

"Jesus Christ," the young woman said to nobody in particular. To Tunis, she said, "You think I never been with a nigger before?”

"Excuse me, ma'am. I mighty thirsty. B'lieve I'll go down the street and find me a drink of water.”

"Boy, you ain't goin' nowhere, till I'm finished with you.”

Tunis replaced his hat. He said, "Miss, my wife's name is Ruthie; my son is Nathaniel Bonneau. I'm waitin' for a train to take me home. I got nothin' to do with you and I don't want nothin' to do with you. If you need a dollar, I'll give you a dollar, but leave me in peace." Tunis reached in his pocket.

"Why you hinckty son of a bitch," the girl said. Her eyes wandered over the empty platform. "Help," she said conversationally. After this rehearsal, she said "Help" several times, louder, until the white men came.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Fastest Ever Was

Although the settees in the lobby of the Jonesboro Hotel had memorized the shapes of old men's bony buttocks and spittoons testified to old men's tobacco habits, there were no old men loafing here this afternoon.

Jefferson Davis peered from a picture frame above the stairwell as if Jonesboro, Georgia, were still a Confederate town and Davis still president of a nation.

Despite the keys in the cubbyholes behind him, the hotel keeper looked Rhett Butler straight in the eye. "I'm full up. I ain't got no rooms." The bone buttons on the man's butternut shirt had replaced buttons stamped "C.S.A." and an unfaded patch on his sleeve showed where sergeant's stripes had been. He pulled a tin can from under his counter and spat.

Rhett set his carpetbag down, walked back to the front door, and lit a cigar. The old men were holding down benches in Courthouse Square.

Younger men gathered on the yellowed lawn. Every hitching post on the square had a horse tied to it; some had two.

Cattycorner from the courthouse, the bank's new wooden sign declared it was the First National Bank of Jonesboro and possessed Capital — $75,000. The bank's previous identity, Planters Bank, was carved in enduring stone over the lintel. The bank's new name and new money would be Yankee.

Rhett returned to the hotel keeper. "What regiment, Sergeant?”

The man snapped to defiant attention. "Goddamned Fifty-second Georgia.”

"Stovall's Brigade? Weren't you boys at Nashville?”

"What if we was?”

"Well," Rhett said, "if you'uns had come up a little faster, maybe we'uns wouldn't have skedaddled.”

"The hell you say. You rode with Forrest?”

"Rhett Butler, C.S.A., at your service, sir.”

"Well, I'll be skinned. Mr. Butler, you sure as hell ain't dressed like one of us. You dressed zactly like one of them.”

Rhett smiled. "My tailor is a pacifist. I'll want a clean room with fresh linen.”

The hotel keeper piled keys into a metal jumble on his counter. "You can have number three, four, five, or six. I won't rent no room to no Carpetbagger.”

He cocked his head. "You sure you ain't no Carpetbagger?”

Rhett raised his right hand, "On my father's honor.”

The man considered. "That'll be all right, then. Room's two bits.

Rooms're all the same, except six has a balcony.”

"Uh-huh.”

"Room six's over the square, so you can see the fun tonight. Mr. Butler, I thought you was a Freedmen's Bureau spy — though Freedmen's Bureau don't hardly come into Clayton County without a company of Bluebellies to safekeep 'em.”

The second-floor hall was narrow, the necessary was downstairs out back, and the transom wouldn't open, but number six was clean, and when Rhett lifted the coverlet, no bedbugs scurried for cover.

Rhett pulled off his boots, hung his jacket over the chair, and laid back on the bed with his hands behind his head. He'd give the hotel keeper time to let everybody in Jonesboro know the stranger was "one of us.”

Rhett hadn't seen a single black face since he got off the train: a bad sign.

His eyes wide open, Rhett remembered Thomas Bonneau shouting psalms into the hurricano. He remembered Tunis explaining how he loved Ruthie: truly and for a lifetime. After an hour, he washed and shaved.

He checked the cartridges in his .32 rimfire revolver and dropped the gun in his coat pocket.

The courthouse's thick cement columns would have supported a structure twice as big. Rust streaked from clock hands seized up at 2 and 4. Wizened hulls hung from chestnut trees. Some of the men had crutches or were missing an arm or leg. Most wore reworked Confederate uniforms. When Rhett turned onto the walk, a one-legged young man on crutches planted himself in his path. "Hear tell you fought with General Forrest.”

"I did.”

"Mister" — the cripple rocked back onto one crutch to point with the other — "that fella wants to have a word with you.”

"Goddamn it, Captain Butler!" Archie Flytte stood on the courthouse steps. "I heard you was residin' in hell.”

Rhett lifted his arms: alive, alive-o. He shouted, "Flytte, you as ornery as you were?”

After Rhett Butler saved Archie Flytte's life, the ex-convict had attached himself to Rhett. He'd bragged on Rhett: "Cap'n Butler, he's educated.”

"Captain Butler, he's seen a bit of the world.”

“Captain Butler, he can speak the Latin. I've heard him with my own ears.”

When Archie's adulation became intolerable, Rhett told him if he didn't shut up, he'd shoot him; after which, Flytte bragged that "Captain Butler would put a bullet in you for doin' him a kindness!”

"Well Archie," Rhett now said, "what do we have here?”

"Got us an uppity nigger.”

"What's he done?”

"Oh hell, he'll tell you hisself. Boy loves to talk. He'll talk your ear off.”

The sheriff's office was four steps down in the courthouse basement.

"Mister, you tell 'em in Atlanta I had nothin' to do with this. I'm tryin' to do my duty, but what can one man do?" Evidently, the sheriff thought Rhett was from the Freedmen's Bureau. "My deputies have made themselves scarce. Bill Riley, my jailer? He never come back from supper.

What can one man do?”

"Mind if I talk to the nigger?" Rhett asked. "You wait here, Archie!" He winked. "You'll scare the boy dumb.”

The sheriff said, "Sure, mister. Sure, talk to him. It's too damn bad he got himself in a fix like this.”

The jail corridor smelled of lye soap, chamber pots, and soured lives.

One cell was occupied.

Tunis sat with his back to the whitewashed stone wall. An eyeglass lens was gone and the other was cracked. His Sunday suit was ruined. He glanced up but didn't stand. " 'Lo, Captain.”

Rhett whistled soundlessly. "They beat hell out of you.”

"The sheriff's not all bad. He sent Ruthie my telegram.”

"Why you?”

When Tunis shifted, he held his breath until his sore body accepted its new position. "My good luck I spect. Your boy — I got your boy on the English steamer. Boy didn't seem altogether fond of you.”

"He's not. The Widow sank?”

"Not two miles off Freeport. What possessed you to put such big engines in that boat?”

"Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Half an hour later, when Rhett emerged from the cells, the sheriff asked, "Where'd you run across him?" For a second, Rhett thought he meant Tunis. "That Archie fella ..." Through the low basement window, Rhett could see men's boots and trouser legs. "Only three families up in Mundy Hollow. I reckon I'm kin to all of 'em. Archie was in the penitentiary, you know.”

"He killed his wife.”

"Hattie was foolin' around. She was my mother's aunt's cousin: The Flyttes never was any account. The Watlings, seems like they couldn't make a go no matter how they tried. And the Talbots — any Talbot with get-up-and go got up and got. I'm Oliver Talbot," the sheriff introduced himself. "Next you'll ask my regiment. Sooner or later, everybody does." He revealed his left arm: a stub with a wizened hand. "Born that way," Talbot said. "I got to be sheriff when all the able-bodied men was in the army. Now the Federals want to replace me with somebody who didn't ever hold no office nor fought for the Confederacy, either. Ain't many men around here can say that.”

"Sheriff...”

The man wouldn't be sidetracked. "Course, there's Bill McCracken.

When the provosts come to conscript Bill, Bill run into the woods. Bill can't read nor write, but might be that won't matter. And he's never spent a day sober, but might be that won't matter, neither. Some sheriff. Where'd you know Archie Flytte?”

"Forrest's division.”

"Uh-huh. Archie and his bunch been terrorizin' our coloreds. Freedmen's Bureau come out twict account of Archie Flytte. Course no white man would testify and no coloreds dared to." He scratched his head. "Last boy they killed, first thing they did was cut off that boy's member. You tell me, mister, why they'd do such a thing. Then they laid him on a heap of chestnut rails and burned him to death. Boy was already dead when they hung him." The sheriff jabbed a thumb toward the cells. "Nigger probably told you he didn't do nothin'.”

"Would it make any difference?”

"Prolly not.”

"What are you going to do?”

"I telegraphed Atlanta. Maybe they'll send some Bluebellies, maybe not. It gets dark about six; that's when I go home for dinner. I b'lieve I'll stay home afterward.”

“The woman who complained? Where can I find her?”

"Little Lisa? Oh, she's a shame. She's a cryin' shame.”

Bert's Saloon was across the tracks in Darktown. Bert, a fat man with greasy black hair, said Rhett would find Lisa out back. "Second door from the left." He opened his mouth in a soundless laugh. "No accountin' for tastes.”

The whores' cribs were in a long, low clapboard building. Crude doors cut in the walls didn't disguise its origin as a chicken house. When Rhett knocked, a muffled voice told him to go away.

"Miss?”

"Goddamn it, go away.”

The smell was worse inside. Where walls met the ceiling, latticework provided light and air. A spindly washstand held a milk-glass pitcher.

Mended, neatly folded cotton stockings were stacked in a wooden crate turned on its side. Long-dead flowers protruded from a liniment bottle. An empty bottle lay beside the bed. The lump under the bedcovers moaned and a woman's hand emerged to wave him away. "Get out," she said without believing any man would ever do what she wanted.

Rhett poured brandy from his flask into its cup and folded the woman's fingers around the cup. Her head emerged from the covers. She brought the cup to her mouth, chattered it against her teeth, and swallowed. She waited to see if it would stay down. The moment passed and she tapped the cup, and Rhett refilled it and she swallowed again. She sat up and cuffed hair out of her eyes. She was naked. "Thanks, mister. You're a pal.”

She fingered her cheeks and jaw to see if she'd suffered injuries she couldn't remember. Her eyes slipped in and out of focus. "My God," she said, "I know you.”

"Lisa?”

"Captain Butler? I sure as hell never thought to see you no more.”

When she smiled, she was young again. "You got any more brandy?”

Rhett emptied his flask and she drained it like medicine. "You want to turn around while I get my clothes on?" She giggled. "Listen to me, little Miss Touch-Me-Not." Frowning, she added, "It's because I knew you before, don't you see.”

Rhett went to the open door and lit a cigar. The cigar smelled good.

Behind him Lisa said, "How's that boy of yours? What's his name? Tuck?”

"Tazewell is safe. He's in school now.”

"He was a good boy. I liked him. You can turn around now. You got another flask? My stomach's rilin' me.”

Rhett shook his head.

She put her hands on her hips. "Look at me, Captain! Ain't I the goddamnedest mess?”

Her dress was a plain yellow cotton shift. She was barefoot. Rhett said, "Come with me. I'll buy you supper.”

The girl snickered. "Me in the Railroad Hotel dining room? Wouldn't that be something? Naw, Captain. Bert has an understanding with Sheriff Talbot. Bert's girls don't cross the tracks and Sheriff don't come down here.”

"Weren't you on the depot platform?”

"I can pick up fellows on the platform." Her brow furrowed. "That why you come? The nigger?”

"He claims you accused him falsely, that he did nothing disrespectful.”

"Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? Captain, Bert'd be glad to sell you a bottle and you and me could get better acquainted. Your son and me were gettin' right friendly. Might be you'd enjoy havin' a girl your boy wanted? I ain't but eighteen.”

Rhett couldn't hide his wince.

"Little rough for you, Captain? Ain't you a man of the world? Whores can't be no big surprise to Captain Rhett Butler.”

"Why did you lie?”

She balled her fists. "What makes you think I lied?”

"I've known Tunis Bonneau all my life.”

"Well, I reckon you're gonna have to find yourself a new nigger.”

Rhett opened his wallet and took out greenbacks. "Sometimes we Southerners talk about the North as if none of it was worth a damn. There are small towns on the Maine seacoast where a Confederate widow with a little cash might make a new life for herself. Or maybe she'd go west — young women are scarce out west. A pretty woman could pick and choose.”

"Why don't you go buy that bottle," Lisa said flatly.

"Don't you want more than this?" Rhett gestured at her crib.

Her features closed up tight. "You bastard. You want me to tell folks I lied? Tell everybody in town Lisa has got herself lower than a low-down, dirty nigger?”

As a gray-faced Rhett Butler came up the courthouse walk, Sheriff Talbot was leaving. Men looked at the clouds or anywhere but at the sheriff, who didn't say a word as he brushed past.

"Where you been, Captain Butler?" Archie asked.

"With a whore.”

Archie's smile shrank. "I don't hold with whores.”

As the sun dropped behind the courthouse roof, bottles appeared.

Archie said, "I b'lieve Sheriff Talbot was hoping the Bluebellies would get here before dark.”

Rhett asked, "Why wait for dark?”

"Some things ain't fittin' for women and children to see.”

"You always were fastidious.”

"And you always liked to use two-bit words. I guess you figured they'd make me mad. Captain, you can't make me mad. No way in hell you can make me mad. You saved my life, and maybe my life ain't worth much, but you're the only one ever saved it.”

"What if I told you that boy didn't do anything?”

Archie was genuinely puzzled. "He's a nigger, ain't he?”

As Rhett went inside, one fellow flung a rope over a stout limb and others tore down the rail fence around a free colored's house. The free colored had left for the North and the poor whites who'd rented his house didn't object.

The sheriff had locked his file cabinets and desk. His wastebasket was set neatly on the desktop for the negro sweeper. Rhett suspected it'd sit there for a good while.

In the dim cell, Tunis was on his knees, praying.

"Lisa won't change her story.”

"Don't reckon it'd make much difference if she did.”

"She wouldn't take money.”

"Might be you could get some of it to Ruthie and my boy?”

"I'll take care of Ruthie and the boy.”

"You don't owe me. Wasn't Captain Butler tied down the steam-escape valves. Captain Bonneau done that." A faint smile flickered over Tunis's face. "That night, I knew the Federals would be waiting for us to come out.

Over the Cape Fear bar, we was doing twenty-two knots. My boat was the fastest ever was.”

"You'd still have the Widow, hadn't been for me.”

"You never did like nobody to do nothing for you, do you, Rhett? Always got to be Captain Butler's hands on the wheel. Well, Rhett, my boat's sunk and I'm gonna die. Ain't nothing you can do to change that.”

"You always were a hardheaded son of a bitch.”

"The negro who ain't hardheaded'll be a nigger all his life. I ain't scared of dyin'. But I fear what they're gonna do to me before I die. When you see Ruthie, tell her I love her. Nathaniel Turner Bonneau — darned if that boy's name don't have a ring to it.”

Rhett said, "It surely does.”

Outside the jail, men's voices rose like surf building before a storm.

Tunis smiled. "Ain't it funny what a man thinks about? I'm scared, so dam — darned — scared. And all I can think about is happy times. I'm remembering first time I laid eyes on Ruthie. It was a Baptist picnic and I bought Ruthie's cake. It was an apple cake. I remember how I felt when little Nat was born and how it was that last time we run the Charleston blockade. I never said, Rhett, how you was: Captain Rhett Butler standin' on his wheel housing and all the Federal shots and shells on this earth couldn't make him step down.”

"Some things stick in the mind," Rhett said quietly. "Did you know Will, the trunk master?”

"Daddy Thomas spoke high of Will.”

"Will was a better father to me than my own father. I couldn't save him, either.”

The two men were silent until Tunis swallowed and said, "There's one thing you can do for me, Rhett. I don't want them to do to me what they're goin' to. I need you ... I need for you to shoot me." Tunis rubbed his lips, as if cleansing the words he'd spoken. His smile was sudden, nervous, luminous and his words tumbled over one another, as if he might not have time to finish. "Remember when we was kids and took my daddy's skiff all the way down to Beaufort? Darned if Daddy didn't tan my hide! Worth it, though — just the two of us and a following wind. I never saw a sky so blue.

Rhett, it's worth living a man's whole life if just once, just one time, he gets to see a sky that blue.”

The men who became beasts that night at the Clayton County courthouse had been soldiers who killed and had friends killed at their sides. Death was no stranger. Tonight was the nigger's turn; tomorrow might be theirs. Though some in that mob were crazy or simple or drunk, others were respectable men acting from what they saw as duty.

If before the War these respectable men hadn't "slipped down to the quarters" to enjoy a black girl, they knew men who had. Unmanned by defeat and afraid of the future, these men could not imagine that black men would not do to white women what white men had done to their women.

Archie Flytte told them, "You and you and you, go get the nigger. Any more, we'll be getting in each other's way. Somebody splash lamp oil on the bonfire.”

When they heard the shot — more like a popgun than a pistol — Archie understood right away. "Now wait a damn minute," he said. "Just wait one goddamned minute.”

Archie ran through the jail to the cell where Tunis Bonneau lay dead on the stone floor.

When Rhett Butler popped a match to light his cigar, the flame shook.

"Damn you, Butler." Archie kicked the cell door. "Goddamn you, Rhett Butler. Why the hell did you do that for?”

Rhett Butler said, "The nigger was disrespectful to a white woman.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT In Federal Custody

The mob swarmed down the corridor into the cell: a fug of unwashed bodies, whiskey fumes, and rage. A balding middle-aged man kicked Tunis's head again and again. "Damn you, nigger! Damn you!”

An indignant graybeard pronounced, "Dead ain't no zample to nobody!

Dead nigger ain't no zample.”

They eyed Rhett Butler from the corners of their eyes like wolves circling a campfire. Rhett kept his hand on the revolver in his coat pocket.

Archie Flytte's hard voice slashed through their mutterings. "Captain Butler, he didn't mean nothin' by it! Captain Butler's a gentleman. You know ary gentleman with a lick of sense?”

"He should take the nigger's place," a disappointed boy spluttered.

"What's that you say, boy? You sayin' we should string up one of General Forrest's troopers? Hang a man fought b'side Archie Flytte? Well, you son of a bitch." Archie grabbed the boy's shirtfront and flung him into the crowd.

The graybeard said, "We got to make a zample!”

Another old man said disgustedly, "Aw, the hell with this. I'm late for dinner.”

"Leave Butler be. There's niggers to burn." A cackle at his own wit, "You hear that? 'There's niggers to burn'!”

As they passed Tunis's corpse down the corridor, men punched and clutched at Tunis's groin and spat. One mad-eyed man dabbed blood from the bullet hole in Tunis's forehead and stuck his finger in his mouth.

After the mob followed the corpse outside, Rhett and Archie were alone in the sheriff's office.

Archie brought a lint-covered plug of tobacco from his pocket, bit off a chaw, and settled it under his lip. "All those months we was ridin' together, I done like you said. I fetched firewood and watered the horses and 'twas me foraged our grub. Was there a rocky place to lie down and a smooth place, you spread your slicker on the smooth. I pretended I never know'd you was lookin' down on me. I guess you figured I was dirtstupid.

Captain Butler, you saved my life. Account of that, I was beholden to you. Well, Captain Butler, I ain't beholden no more. You and me are quits.”

After Archie left, Rhett slumped against the rough stone wall and released his revolver. His hand ached from gripping it. He looked at his trembling hand, opened and closed his fingers. It was a hand, only a hand — whatever it had done.

He heard the whump when lamp oil ignited their bonfire. The basement windows glowed red. They darkened when they tossed Tunis onto the blaze.

Rhett snuffed the lantern and sat in the dark behind the sheriff's desk while the mob screeched and hollered and an off-key voice wailed, "I'll live and die in Dixie! I'll live and die in Dixie!”

When the stink of burning meat seeped into the basement, Rhett lit another cigar and puffed until the tip glowed. He coughed and gagged and his stomach heaved. He puffed until the cigar scorched his fingers.

Sometime later, they dragged Tunis out of the fire to hang him. They started shooting. They yelled and shot for a time.

About four that morning, the moon set and men went home to their warm beds, their beloved wives and children.

It was getting light when Rhett came out. Three men sat by the bonfire, passing a bottle. What had been Captain Tunis Bonneau — Ruthie's husband, Nat's father, Rhett's friend — dangled from the limb of a chestnut tree. It looked more like last year's Yule log than a man.

Something glittered at Rhett's boot tip. He bent for the metal frames of Tunis's lensless glasses.

One of the drunks tottered to his feet, wobbled toward the fire, saved himself by throwing his arms in the air, got turned properly, and zigged and zagged down the street.

Cooing and clucking, pigeons fluttered onto the courthouse lawn. Two ravens settled in the chestnut tree. One opened its wings and cawed. The other dropped onto the burned thing and pecked at it.

Sheriff Talbot arrived. "Mornin', Butler." The sheriff's glance never wandered to the torso. "I b'lieve you killed my prisoner.”

"Yes.”

"Well, I ain't sayin' if I'd been the nigger I wouldn't have wanted you to do what you done, but that don't change the facts.”

"Facts don't change.”

"No sir, they don't. You killed the nigger what was in my custody and I got to arrest you and hold you until the Bluebellies get here. I'll have your pistol, sir. I hope you don't mind, but I've got a job to do.”

They sat on the courthouse steps until a vedette of Federal cavalry trotted up Jonesboro's main street. Their captain swung down, shook out stiff legs, and rubbed his buttocks. He glanced at the charred thing that had been a man. His men loosened saddle girths and turned their horses onto the lawn to graze. Ignoring the sleeping drunks, a trooper kicked the fire into flame. The captain wore the aggravated expression of a veteran who'd drawn unpleasant duty. He nodded to the sheriff.

"This here's Rhett Butler," Sheriff Talbot said. "Was him killed the nigger.”

"Butler?... Butler?... Sir, we've been looking for you. You'll come with us to army headquarters.”

"That nigger was in my custody and Butler shot him dead. This is his pistol what done it.”

The captain stuck the gun in his belt. "Sheriff, cut that thing down and get it buried.”

"I don't know if I can, Captain. The boys hung it up and they'll cut it down. They won't want anyone foolin' with it.”

"Sergeant!”

When the sergeant approached, the ravens flew, cawing angrily. The sergeant cut the rope with his saber. The thud of Tunis Bonneau hitting the ground settled in Rhett's soul forever. That afternoon, Rhett Butler rode with the Federal patrol along the Macon and Western Railroad into Atlanta. Burned and exploded railcars had been dragged aside and shiny new rails snaked along the old roadbed.

Central Atlanta was a moonscape of broken walls, toppled chimneys, brick piles, and broken melted machines whose original purposes were unguessable. The Georgia Railroad Bank had been reduced to a broken wall. The Car Shed's great roof was crumpled like a blanket over its ruins.

An open-air locomotive round table had been hastily constructed within the roofless circular walls of what had been a roundhouse.

Federal soldiers were everywhere; their tent city overflowed the public square.

While blue-clad soldiers drilled and ex-slaves explored their freedom, Atlantans were rebuilding. Here, men laid reclaimed bricks atop a firescorched wall; there, a rickety scaffold held workers setting a keystone in place.

Before Rhett and his escort reached Federal headquarters, the news was out: "Captain Butler's back and he's been arrested.”

“Rhett Butler's with a Federal patrol.”

The patrol crossed the devastated rail yard into a neighborhood that had escaped the fire.

Rhett had been inside Judge Lyon's house — now army headquarters — before the War. The house's Corinthian columns needed paint and the balustrade was gap-toothed where balusters had been ripped out for kindling.

Rhett was escorted past a brace of saluting sentries into what had been the judge's office. Three officers warmed themselves at the fire and a panfaced first sergeant was writing in the daybook.

He set down his pen. "Who do we have here, Captain?”

"Picked him up in Jonesboro. Rhett Butler. He killed a negro.”

An officer came over. "Rhett Butler, Rhett Butler. I'll be... I'll wager you don't remember me.”

Rhett blinked and shook his head.

"Tom Jaffery. Remember? The field of honor? Charleston? Lord, I was green.”

"You're a captain now," Rhett observed.

"Never was good at anything but soldiering." Jaffery paused. "We've been looking for you. Orders straight from the top. 'Bring in Rhett Kershaw Butler.' “

Rhett said. "You've brought me in.”

The sergeant inscribed Rhett's name in the daybook and barked, "Hopkins, telegraph the War Department, we've got Butler." He accepted Rhett's wallet and watch, which he absently pocketed.

Tom Jaffery escorted Rhett down the street. "Butler, what have you got yourself into now?”

Firehouse Number Two overlooked the fire scene it had been powerless to prevent. It was still very much a firehouse. Sentries didn't conceal the original purpose of the wide arched doors through which fire engines had come at the gallop while alarm bells were ringing from the squat cupola on the roof.

The engine floor held petty malefactors.

Along the second-floor hallway, a sentry stood before each door. A leather fire helmet hung beside the window of Rhett's small room. An iron bed and deal table completed the furnishings. It was bitter cold.

Jaffery hesitated before saying, "I'm sorry to see you in this fix. Is there anything I can do? Anyone you want told?”

"I'd like writing materials." Rhett paused. "Jaffery, that foggy morning beside the Ashley — what did you think of us?”

Tom Jaffery said, "I thought you were lunatics. Every one of you.”

After the captain departed, the sentry outside Rhett's door settled in his chair, which squeaked when he shifted his weight. From time to time, he coughed.

Rhett laid Tunis's smashed glasses on the table. They might have been some small harmless creature's skeleton. He could see his breath and he clenched his jacket lapels together. Rhett heard the rasp and pop of the match when his sentry lit his pipe. He smelled burning tobacco.

He heard a thump from the adjoining room when that room's occupant came off his bed. The other prisoner paced back and forth.

Below his high barred window, the moon rose over miles of shadowy ruins. Scavengers scuttled through the razed city, seeking shingles for kindling and scrap iron and brass to sell. Before dawn, Rhett knew several scavengers by their size, their speed, and how they moved from shadow to shadow, but he couldn't tell whether they were black men or white.

A young private with jug ears and a blotchy complexion brought him a bowl of cold oatmeal and the writing materials he'd asked for. When Rhett asked for a second blanket, the boy apologized. "I can't, sir. Orders from the War Department. What did you do to make 'em so mad?”

Rhett jotted a quick note to a Connecticut Senator with whom he had done wartime business. He spent the rest of his morning penning a long letter to Ruthie Bonneau.

Rufus Bullock's luxurious sideburns had been barber-trimmed, and when he sat on Rhett's bed and crossed his legs, his shoes were so new the soles weren't scratched. Bullock's wool overcoat was thick as a horse blanket.

Bullock shook his head heavily. "Rhett, what have you done? Rufus Bullock is a man of consequence in Georgia's Republican party, but Rufus had to beg General Thomas himself for a visit. I came as soon as I could.”

"Tunis Bonneau ..." Rhett began.

"They don't care about the negro. They'll only hang you if you force their hand.”

"The negro's name was Tunis Bonneau. He was a free black. His family home was on the river below Broughton.”

"I've met him. His father-in-law, William Prescott, is prominent. Rhett, the murder charge is a pretext." Rufus peered around the room suspiciously before whispering, "They say you've got the Confederate treasury.”

Rhett closed his eyes. "Ah, yes. That treasury.”

Rufus frowned. "Rhett, this is no laughing matter!”

"Rufus, my friend, it certainly is. The Confederacy never had a treasury.

All the Confederacy had was a printing press." With some effort, Rhett stayed polite. "You're looking prosperous, Rufus.”

"The Republicans want Rufus Bullock to run for governor.”

"Ex-Confederates can't hold office.”

"I wasn't a Confederate.”

"That colonel's commission you held?”

"Honorary, Rhett. Purely honorary. Rufus Bullock never took the Confederate oath. During the war, he represented the Southern Express Company, overseeing freight shipments. If the Confederate government hired the company, how could Rufus refuse? Business is business, is it not?”

"So Rufus, you are a Scalawag.”

He puffed out his chest and wagged his finger. "Rufus Bullock is Northern-born!" Rufus chafed his hands. "Cold in here.”

It IS.

"Rhett, my friend, please listen. The congressional Republicans Sumner, Blaine, Thad Stevens — they won't be put off. If you don't want to be hanged for murdering Tunis Bonneau, you'd best be flexible about your money.”

"Thank you, Rufus. I'm sure you mean it kindly.”

Rufus Bullock talked until he tired of his own arguments. When he rose to go, Rhett gave him his letters to mail. Bullock inspected the addresses.

"Rhett, how did you know the Senator?”

"I know a good many people, some less honorable than you, my friend.”

"I've a courier going to Washington tomorrow. He'll hand-carry this.”

Rhett shrugged. "As you like. The letter to Mrs. Bonneau is more important.”

Rufus Bullock left without his new wool overcoat, but that evening, when the private brought Rhett's supper of cold beets and potatoes, he took it away.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Gallows in the Garden

Despite a starvation diet and temperatures only slightly above freezing, Rhett was neither cold nor hungry. He was not angry or afraid.

The prisoner in the next room coughed and moaned in his sleep. Although Rhett never communicated with him, his presence was a vague comfort.

Rhett thought about Tunis Bonneau. He wondered what became of trunk master Will's wife, Mistletoe.

Except the hours during the warmest part of the day, when he was able to sleep, Rhett sat bolt upright on his iron bed, watching the desolation beneath his window. It was an opera without music. From dark to dawn, scavengers roamed and scurried and fought over prizes. From sunrise to sunset, in this blasted heath, new buildings went up. All the scavengers' ferocious energy changed nothing, but the builders were altering the ruined city's skyline.

Rhett did not count the days and weeks he'd been a prisoner.

One morning, it snowed. Fat, slow flakes softened the wounded landscape.

Loud-booted soldiers came for the prisoner in the next room. "Private Armstrong, it's time." The man's fight shook the connecting wall.

When the thumping and gasping and cursing ended and the man was restrained, he shouted, "No! No! No!" His denials diminished as the soldiers bore him down the stairs and away still crying, "Noooooo.”

That same afternoon, two negroes wrestled a hip bath into Rhett's room and the splotchy-faced young private brought buckets of steaming water. "It's going to be all right now, sir," the boy said. "Mr. Puryear's here from Washington. Everything will be all right now.”

When Rhett was naked and wrapped in a fresh woolen blanket, the private gave him a bar of French milled soap. "It was in your bag, sir. I hope you don't mind.”

As Rhett eased into the hot water, he murmured, "Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Peanut, the National Hotel's barber, came to shave Rhett. When the private stepped out of the room, the negro whispered urgently, "Miss Belle says to take heart. Mr. Bullock workin' on gettin' you out. He workin' on it!" What more the barber might have said was cut short by the private's return with the carpetbag Rhett had last seen in the Jonesboro Hotel.

"I'm sorry, Peanut. I've no money.”

"That's all right, Captain Rhett. Miss Belle done took care of me.”

After Rhett was dressed in his own clean clothes, Captain Jaffery came for him. He winced at Rhett's emaciation. "I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't prevent this.”

Rhett clasped the man's shoulder and followed him down the stairs.

In the street, drovers lashed horses through part-frozen mud. Thick red clay coated their wagon spokes and broke off in chunks from the turning wheels.

A skim of snow frosted the headquarters balustrade.

Captain Jaffery escorted Rhett into the guardroom. "Wait here. I'll let Mr. Puryear know you're here.”

The small tree in the guardroom was adorned with red and green paper streamers, apples, and harness bells. Rhett warmed himself at the fire. A red-faced, mustachioed captain smacked his fist into his palm. "The Klan is undoing everything we fought for.”

But a lieutenant was grinning as he aimed an imaginary rifle and made cocking sounds: "Ku. Klux. Klan.”

Jaffery led Rhett up the spur-scarred black walnut staircase. Before tall double doors, Jaffery offered his hand. "Whatever happens," he said, "good luck to you.”

The former drawing room's sixteen-foot ceilings were framed by elaborate plaster cornices. Undraped floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked what had once been a rose garden.

The gateleg table beside the windows was set for two. The starched linen tablecloth had Z's embroidered in the corners; the heavy silver was London-made. A bottle of Sillery chilled in an ice bucket.

A gallows had been erected in the garden and footprints, half-filled with snow, crossed the yard and up thirteen steps to the platform. The trap hung open, a dark square hole in the snowy platform. Two sets of fresher footprints dipped under the platform and an outline in snow was where the coffin had waited for its burden: that coffin now propped upright beside the garden gate. The snow that fell on the coffin was melted by fading body heat inside. Its planks glistened.

"Good-bye, Private Armstrong," Rhett said softly. "May you find the next world more to your liking.”

The drawing room door clicked open. Without turning, he said, "Hello, Edgar. So you are to be my Tempter.”

"Ah, Rhett, I came as soon as I heard." Edgar Allan Puryear's stiff tweed suit was set off by a new vest and a braided-hair watch chain. His smile was supremely confident. "I trust you weren't too uncomfortable. I came straightaway.”

"I must thank you, Edgar. I don't believe I ever owed a man a bath.”

Edgar pulled back a chair. "Do sit down, Rhett. Please. We'll eat and talk and see if we can't get you out of this mess. Socrates!”

A gray-haired negro houseman answered Puryear's shout. "You may serve us, Socrates." Before the servant was out of earshot, Edgar confided to Rhett, "Judge Lyon's man. I don't know what we'll do when his kind are gone.”

"Serve ourselves? So, Edgar. I see you've landed on your feet.”

Edgar Puryear rested his elbows on the table. "You and I could see this coming, couldn't we, Rhett? Fools may have clung to chivalric fantasies, but not us businessmen, eh?”

Rhett nodded at the coffin in the garden. "Private Armstrong — was he a businessman?”

"Armstrong? Oh my, no. Common murderer. Shot his sergeant while drunk." Edgar frowned thoughtfully. "A little less whiskey and he wouldn't have done it, a little more and he couldn't. Of such slight miscalculations are fortunes lost and men hanged.”

Rhett sat with his hands folded while Edgar Puryear shook out his napkin and tucked it into his vest. Socrates opened the champagne, filled their glasses, and stood impassively against the wall.

"So you're a hangman now, Edgar?”

Edgar Puryear choked on his champagne. "Oh, no, no. I had nothing to do with that" he said, gesturing vaguely at the windows. "Routine military court-martial, customary sentence. No, Rhett, I'd rather men not hang!

A toast, Rhett, to the future, your future.”

"I won't drink with you, Edgar," Rhett said.

Puryear's glass was extended in his toast. After the slightest pause, he drank and Socrates refilled his glass. Puryear wiped his mouth. "As you wish," he said. When Edgar snapped his fingers, the houseman rolled the serving cart to their table.

"Will you try the quail, sir?" The houseman uncovered a chafing dish.

His serving fork and spoon hovered above aromatic delicacies.

"Nothing, thanks, Socrates," Rhett said politely.

"Captain Butler, we got the fricasseed sweetbreads, the fresh mountain trout, and the Virginia ham General Thomas favors. We got the yams, the fried greens, the wild rice, the beaten biscuits...”

"Please serve Mr. Puryear. He seems ... puny.”

Edgar asked tightly, "So Uncle, you know Mr. Butler?”

"Oh yes, sir. All us coloreds know Cap'n Butler. From during the War, sir.”

"Then you know he shot a negro.”

Socrates shook his gray head. "Yes, sir. We heard all 'bout that. Sure is pitiful when the United States Army can't protect decent coloreds.”

Edgar made his choices with a quick jabbing finger. When his plate was brimming, he said, "Wait outside, Uncle. I'll call you if I need you.”

Edgar picked at his food. "Rhett, do you really think you can defy the United States Congress by refusing to eat supper?”

"Edgar, thank you for your concern, but I'm not hungry. I have feasted in Federal custody. Delmonico's could not have fed me better.”

The champagne he gulped didn't improve Edgar Puryear's humor. He wiped his hands on his napkin, blew air past his lips, straightened his tie, and started afresh. "Rhett, the United States Congress is very angry. They hanged Mrs. Surratt — whose worst crime was keeping the boardinghouse where John Wilkes Booth plotted. Dr. Mudd, who innocently set the assassin's broken leg, languishes in prison. The Yankees are in a hanging frame of mind, Rhett. In times like this, it doesn't do to stand out from the crowd. Rhett, you stand out.”

Rhett said nothing.

"The sweetbreads are delicious," Puryear said.

Rhett's grin flashed.

Edgar Puryear pushed his plate back. "Rhett, they don't give a damn about that negro you killed.”

"I believe I'm the only white man in Georgia who did give a damn about him," Rhett said evenly.

"That girl, that Lisa? I've been to Jonesboro..." Edgar smirked. "I've sported with little Lisa.”

Rhett shrugged. "No accounting for tastes.”

Puryear extended an accusatory finger. "Rhett Kershaw Butler, did you or did you not hold the blockade runner the Merry Widow in Wilmington harbor on the night of January 14, 1865, in order to take on a special cargo: "You know I did, Edgar. You know why I did.”

"Did you or did you not load the Confederate treasury on that vessel?”

Rhett leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head, and stretched. "Oh, Edgar. You are such a ... such a painful person! Is that the best scheme you and your Yankee friends can concoct to steal my money?”

"Do you think we'll let you keep the fortune you made violating the United States blockade?”

"Edgar, I am thoroughly busted. You see before you living proof of imprudence. Though my dear mother preached a penny saved, a penny earned and so on, I was deaf to her entreaties. I am broke, busted, flat as a johnnycake.”

Edgar waggled his finger. "Don't underestimate us, Rhett. Our agents have interviewed your banker — what's his name ... Campbell? We don't want all of your money. We'd be satisfied with a ... reasonable portion.”

Rhett got to his feet. "Thank you for the best dinner I've had in weeks, Edgar. I think I'll skip the coffee tonight. Coffee disturbs my sleep.”

CHAPTER THIRTY Deception

After this interview, Rhett was given three blankets, ordinary soldier's rations, even the occasional newspaper. Edgar Puryear visited twice but hosted no more gallows-side suppers. Although he insisted Rhett must turn over his blockade-running profits to Federal authorities, Edgar's most persuasive argument — that Rhett would be hanged if he didn't — weakened every day. To Rufus Bullock's amazement, powerful senators were acting on Rhett's behalf. By the New Year, nobody, excepting Captain Butler himself, recalled that Rhett Butler had shot and killed Tunis Bonneau.

One brisk January afternoon, Captain Jaffery knocked. "You've a visitor, Captain Butler. Your 'sister' Scarlett is here to see you." Jaffery grinned like a schoolboy.

"Dear, dear Scarlett. How good of Sister to come," Rhett replied, his mind in a turmoil.

"Handsome woman, your sister." Jaffery handed him his jacket.

"Why, yes, I suppose she is." Scarlett. Sunshine and hope and everything he had ever wanted. Grimness and sorrow receded into the past.

The two men clattered down the firehouse stairs, past the sentries into the cold. Exuberance rushed in where Rhett's resistance to Scarlett had once lodged, and he couldn't stop smiling. He called out, "Good morning, sir.

Isn't this a grand morning?" to a mud-spattered teamster whose overloaded wagon was mired to its hubs. The teamster gave him a look.

Rhett tipped his hat to a pair of Atlanta ladies who were not too busy snubbing the hated Yankee soldiers to snub the notorious Captain Butler.

Up the familiar steps, into Federal headquarters, a right turn, then into a roomful of anonymous Yankee soldiers and Scarlett.

When he saw her, Rhett Kershaw Butler forgot who he was and every hurtful lesson he'd learned. They'd been such a long time apart; it seemed a lifetime.

Scarlett wore a moss green velvet gown and a gaily feathered bonnet.

She was in the room with him. She'd come to him. Her smile. Herself.

He fought back tears. "Scarlett!" He kissed her cheek. "My darling little sister.

A Yankee captain protested: "Most irregular. He should be in the firehouse.

You know the orders.”

"Oh for God's sake, Henry," Captain Jaffery replied, "The lady would freeze in that barn.”

That the brother and sister might have privacy, Tom Jaffery evicted two clerks from an orderly room that had once been a butler's pantry. Lit by a single window, lighter-colored plaster showed where the plate racks had hung. Sheaves of military orders dangled from nails driven into the wainscoting.

When Rhett bent to kiss Scarlet, she turned her face away.

"Can't I really kiss you now?”

"On the forehead, like a good brother.”

"Thank you, no. I prefer to wait and hope for better things.”

Rhett Butler felt like a young man again. As if everything were possible, as if the world were brand-new.

Scarlett told him Tara had escaped the War unscathed. She said her son, Wade, and Melly's little Beau were fine, that Tara had an able farm manager in Will Benteen.

"And Mr. Ashley Wilkes?”

Carelessly, Scarlett said that Mrs. Wilkes was glad to have Ashley home again. Will Benteen was courting her sister Carreen. Suellen was still chasing that old maid Frank Kennedy.

Rhett chuckled, "Old Frank may be a bore, but he's got money.”

Scarlett made a face.

She paused and then spoke so softly, Rhett had to lean forward to hear.

"Mother passed away. Of the fever. She was ... dead when I came home to Tara." Her eyes brimmed.

"I am so sorry, my dear. Your father, Gerald?”

Scarlett looked away. "Gerald keeps himself busy.”

Was that a false note in her voice? Perhaps her father wasn't as well as she claimed. Gerald must be getting on in years.

It didn't matter. Scarlett had come to see him. She who'd spurned him when he was rich and free had come to see an impoverished prisoner the Yankees were threatening to hang.

He told her she looked lovely. He asked her to turn around.

As she spun, her lovely green dress wafted, exposing lace-trimmed pantalets.

He clasped his hands behind his back to keep himself from devouring her then and there.

Scarlett told him that Tara's faithful negroes had hidden the plantation's livestock in the woods, where Sherman's bummers couldn't find them, and Tara'd cleared twenty bales of cotton last year and things would be even better this year — but (she sighed) it was so terribly dull in the country.

She'd become accustomed to city life.

Rhett wondered how Scarlett could be bored, unless she'd gone through all the country boys.

"Oh Rhett, I didn't come all the way out here to hear you talk foolishness about me. I came because I'm terribly distressed about you. When will they let you out of this terrible place?”

"And when they do?" he asked softly, leaning closer.

Scarlett blushed like a maiden. As he leaned toward her, she raised her hand tenderly to his cheek. It was scratchy. Puzzled, he lowered her hand and turned it over. Scarlett's palm was raw and cracked and her fingernails were broken. He stared, uncomprehending. She didn't resist when he took her other hand and turned it over, too. Just as his hands had been when he labored in Broughton's rice fields.

Rhett licked his lips. As he had soared, he plummeted. His heart shriveled into something hard and mean. Dully, he asked, "So you have been doing very nicely at Tara, have you? Cleared so much money on the cotton, you can go visiting. Why did you lie to me?”

Deep in her astonishing eyes he saw a flare — like a hunted vixen's in the lamplight. "They can hang me higher than Haman for all you care.”

Rhett let her hands drop. What a tawdry room this was. What had been generous as hope became a dirty little closet inhabited by Tunis Bonneau's murderer and a female cheat.

Money. She wanted money. Sure, she wanted money. She talked fast, her words tumbling over one another. Tara, her beloved Tara, was to be sold for unpaid taxes, and Scarlett didn't have a cent. She'd fashioned her velvet dress from Tara's window curtains. "You said you never wanted a woman as much as you wanted me. If you still want me, you can have me.

Rhett, I'll do anything you say, but for God's sake, write me a draft for the money.”

What a wonder she was! Scarlett O'Hara had priced his love. Three hundred dollars — he could enjoy his faithless darling for the price of a London suit or a pretty good horse. When you thought about it, three hundred was a bargain. Some Paris courtesans charged more than that. "I haven't any money," Rhett said wearily.

She attacked him. She sprang to her feet with a cry that quenched the hum of soldiers' voices in the next room. Rhett clamped a hand over her mouth and lifted her off her feet. She kicked, tried to bite. She tried to scream.

It took all his strength to hold her. Rhett thought, She would do anything.

She is just like me.

Scarlett's eyes rolled back in her head as she fainted.

Yankee officers rushed in to revive the young lady. Captain Jaffery fetched a glass of brandy.

When Scarlett O'Hara left that place, she was a defeated child, lost in her fake finery and a bonnet whose gay feathers — Rhett now knew — had been plucked from the tail of a barnyard rooster.

That night, Rhett dreamed he murdered a little girl. Put his rimfire pistol against her forehead and pulled the trigger.

Two weeks later, when Captain Jaffery brought news of Scarlett's elopement, he was puzzled. "But didn't your sister tell you she planned to marry?”

For a moment, Rhett didn't trust himself to speak.

The captain clapped Rhett's shoulder. "Perhaps Miss Scarlett thought her big brother might not approve of her new husband! Nothing to worry about: Frank Kennedy is thoroughly respectable." Captain Jaffery scratched his ear. "I'm a little surprised a woman like your sister would fall for fussy old Frank — and wasn't Frank engaged to marry another?" He smiled ruefully.

"A woman's heart" — Jaffery put his hand over his own — "who can understand it?”

"If Kennedy's got three hundred dollars, I can.”

The forsythias were blossoming when Rufus Bullock brought Rhett's pardon. It bore the signature of a Connecticut Senator who was not known as a forgiving man. Rufus asked, "Rhett, that letter you wrote him — in heaven's name, what did you say?”

Rhett smacked dust from the hat he hadn't worn in months and set it at a rakish angle. "Rufus, the Senator made a fortune during the War manufacturing the cotton linings of Federal officers' coats. Did you ever wonder where the Senator found that contraband cotton?" Rhett Butler grinned broadly. "Rufus, let us leave this place. It is spring.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE A Southern Belle

The summer was droughty. The corn crop was poor, the cotton hardly worth ginning. White preachers couldn't explain to their flocks why God had abandoned the Confederate republic. Some preachers contemplated suicide; others quit the pulpit. Negro preachers and parishioners penned eloquent petitions to the United States Congress seeking their promised rights. Some prominent ex-Confederates — General Wade Hampton in South Carolina and Virginia's General William Mahone among them — said negroes must have voting rights, arguing that the South must be rebuilt by blacks and whites together. But Georgia's General John B.

Gordon and Tennessee's General Nathan Bedford Forrest used their wartime prestige to restore the prewar order.

Yankee idealists bought tickets South to promote negro education and citizenship. Republican congressmen who'd lost friends and kin to Confederate bullets sought revenge. Opportunists wanted to roll the Southern corpse over to see if there was anything underneath worth stealing.

The U.S. Army turned over railcars and locomotives to the same railroad companies they'd recently wrecked. Although Southern railroads had to pay their workers with sides of bacon and bags of flour, track was furiously relaid, bridges and tunnels were rebuilt, and if passengers sometimes had to transfer to wagons for a stretch, the trains were running.

With the profits of Frank Kennedy's store, Scarlett O'Hara Kennedy bought a sawmill. Financed by torrents of Yankee money, Atlanta was rebuilding at a breakneck pace. Brick, Portland cement, and lime fetched premium prices, and wagonloads of north Georgia pine rolled down Marietta Road to the Kennedys' sawmill. Proper Atlantans sniffed that Mrs. Kennedy "wore the pants in that family." But Scarlett was too busy to care. She bought a second sawmill and persuaded Ashley Wilkes to run it.

When Scarlett and Frank Kennedy's daughter, Ella, was born, Scarlett's daughter strongly resembled her homely husband.

When Gerald O'Hara died, Scarlett's money and her farm manager, Will Benteen, were already rebuilding Tara.

One morning, as Belle Watling dug deeper than usual in her bureau drawer, she was struck by a possibility that made her gasp.

Belle's laundry woman had run off with Dr. Jewett's Scientific Remedy Medicine Show, which Belle didn't learn until MacBeth returned her laundry unlaundered. At the bottom of her bureau Belle found a garment wrapped in parchment paper. She pulled back a corner to reveal the rich gray fabric of the dress Rhett had given her long ago. Belle sat down, breathless with calculation: Scarlett O'Hara was Scarlett Kennedy now. They had a daughter. The Kennedy marriage should last until Scarlett was an old woman.

The rest of that day, Belle went about the house humming and singing nonsense songs until Minette complained that she, Minette, had been a habitué of New Orleans's Opera St. Louis and Belle's "omp-pah-pahs" and "oh doodah days" were hopelessly unmusical.

"Oh Minette," Belle replied happily. "Can't expect a soiled dove to sing like a dove, now can you?”

To the dismay of several older customers who had favored a comfortable (less demanding) paramour, Belle quit receiving gentlemen callers. On a diet of greens, bread, and water, her waistline shrank.

One afternoon, MacBeth drove her to the Wilkeses' home.

"Go 'round back," Belle said nervously. "Through the alleyway.”

Outside the gate of the Wilkeses' kitchen garden, Belle hesitated. Who was she to ask anything of anybody? Why, she thought, I am Ruth Belle Watling; that's me. Her courage plucked up, she brushed past Melanie's fall greens and baskets of just-dug potatoes.

When she knocked at the back door, a curtain pulled back and a solemn little boy peered at her. He stuck his thumb in his mouth. In response to Belle's reassuring smile, the child let the curtain fall and ran to the front of the house. "Mama, Mama!”

"What is it, Beau honey? Is something wrong?”

Belle heard a woman's footsteps. "Is someone here, Beau? How good you are to tell me.”

The woman who opened the back door was thin — too thin — and her dark eyes were enormous. "Why... Miss Watling. What a pleasant surprise!

"Mrs. Wilkes, I didn't want to shame you, so I come 'round back.”

"How could you shame me, dear? Please, come in.”

Belle eased into the kitchen. When Melanie suggested they proceed to the parlor, Belle demurred. "Thank you, ma'am, but the kitchen's fine.”

Staring at the stranger, Beau wrapped around his mother's legs.

Melanie pulled out a stool. "Won't you sit? Will you take a cup of tea?”

Belle's mouth was dry from nervousness. "I wouldn't mind a glass of water.”

Melanie worked the pitcher pump until cool water splashed. Like all Atlanta well water, it tasted of iron.

"Mrs. Wilkes, I thank you for seein' me and I won't pester you much.

You ain't so snooty as them other ladies and I thought I might ask you ...”

Melanie's gentle smile invited Belle's confidence.

There were fresh daisies in a vase beside the sink and bright windows overlooked a lovingly tended garden.

"Right nice garden," Belle said. "Right nice greens.”

"Thank you. You shall take some with you.”

"Oh, no Mrs. Wilkes. I didn't mean I wanted none." Belle dropped her eyes. "I was just sayin' they was nice.”

"Well," Melanie said, "I always have a cup of tea this time of day.

Won't you join me?" She stooped to shake the stove grate and add wood to the firebox.

It was a newfangled stove with a water tank perched beside the hood.

When Belle admired it, Melanie said ready hot water was convenient. Belle asked if Mr. Wilkes liked managing a sawmill, and after a slight hesitation, Melanie told her, "Mr. Wilkes was reared as a gentleman.”

Belle asked if Miss Pittypat Hamilton still owned the house behind the garden and Melanie said yes, that she and her brother, Charles, had been raised by Miss Pittypat and when the Wilkeses returned to Atlanta after the war, they'd been fortunate to rent the house that backed up on Melanie's childhood home. So many memories.

"Mr. and Mrs. Kennedy livin' with Miss Pittypat now?”

"Why yes, they are. We're doubly blessed. My son and I spent the last year of the War on Mrs. Kennedy's family plantation, Tara." Melanie added, "Of course Scarlett wasn't Mrs. Kennedy at that time. Scarlett is my brother Charles's widow.”

Belle yearned to ask if the Kennedys' marriage was happy, but she couldn't think how to phrase that question. She set her teacup down so quickly, it clicked against the saucer. "Mrs. Wilkes, a gentleman has took my heart.”

"Why Belle, what good news! My own marriage has been so fortunate, I pity women who've never wed.”

"Things ain't gone so far as that. The thing is, Mrs. Wilkes" — Belle's face glowed with earnestness — "my gentleman's a Gentleman and I ain't no Lady.”

Melanie thought before replying. "I'm not sure, Miss Watling, how important that distinction is. Doesn't God love all his children?”

"Maybe He does, but all His children surely don't love all His other children. Generally, Gendemen, they love Ladies, and the Other Sort loves the Other Sort.”

Belle wished she could be as serene as Mrs. Wilkes. She wished she didn't feel sweat starting. What if a drop ran down her arm, where Mrs. Wilkes could see it? She gulped tea and pressed on. "I came to ask you, Mrs. Wilkes. How can I turn myself into a lady?”

The tiny flicker at the back of Melanie's eyes almost killed Belle's hopes then and there, but Melanie's smile was kind. She said, "I've never thought about it. To be a lady doesn't one act and seem like a lady?”

"I don't know, Mrs. Wilkes. That's why I come.”

"But your ... occupation ...”

"I don't see no more callers. I just own the place.”

I see.

"I mean, how can I seem like a lady? I dunno know how to act and I dunno how to dress. Mrs. Wilkes, I dunno know how to think like a lady thinks!" When Belle opened her hands helplessly, a cold drop of sweat trickled down her rib cage. "Mrs. Wilkes, where can I get clothes like yours?”

"Dear me, Miss Watling. Being a lady is more than — “

"I got money.”

"I'm afraid money — “

"But right clothes and money are a start, aren't they?”

"Well, I suppose they might be...”

So later that week, without telling a soul, Melanie Wilkes escorted Belle Watling to Atlanta's best dressmaker. Miss Smithers was an octoroon who had been free colored before the War, and no white women had higher standards of propriety.

Nowadays, most of Miss Smithers's business came from Carpetbaggers' or Yankee officers' wives. Her establishment was a shotgun house on Mitchell Street. In her front room, one dressmaker's dummy wore a delicate high-necked blouse, while another was naked brown muslin stretched over a wire frame. Bolts of cloth — piques, lawns, worsteds, failles, velvets, and brocades — draped Miss Smithers's counters and pattern books were stacked higher than the diminutive dressmaker's head.

She touched the pattern books. "What style do you fancy, Miss Watling? Paris, London, New York, Boston?”

"You make Mrs. Kennedy's clothes?”

"Why yes, I do.”

"I want to be somewheres between her and" — Belle pointed at her companion — "Mrs. Wilkes here.”

Unwrapped, the parcel Belle held so tenderly contained the gray dress Rhett had given her. "Oh dear, I'm afraid I cannot alter this garment." Miss Smithers held the dress up. "The neckline and bodice ... I'm afraid not.

And we don't wear hoops these days.”

"Can't you find the same fabric? My dearest friend give me this.”

Miss Smithers thought to explain that no two fabrics were exactly alike, that this weave was French, that... the seamstress relented at the hope in Belle's eyes. "I will see what I can do," she said.

After they had arranged for dresses, blouses, and jackets, Melanie took Belle to the German shoemaker, where Belle was fitted for three pairs, one in patent leather.

Before they parted, Melanie said, "I'm afraid, Belle, that being a lady is more than proper clothes. It is an attitude. From your ... experience, you may know more of business and politics than ladies are supposed to know.

Gentlemen are pleased to think ladies are ornamental, and it is an illadvised ornament who contradicts her gentleman.”

"Thank you.”

"You'll want to read books — novels, because ladies are frivolous; poetry because ladies are sentimental; and sermons, because we are pious. If you must read essays, Mr. Emerson might be best. Your gentleman may have a nodding acquaintance with his works." Melanie paused. "Your diction, Belle ...”

"The way I talk, you mean?”

"Imitate the heroines of novels. Ladies talk as they do.”

Although Mr. Belmont's jewelry store had burned and his safe hadn't proved as fireproof as its maker had promised, Belmont had set up again not far from his prewar location. Belle wanted ear bobs to match the cameo she showed him. "They got to match this brooch. It is my prized possession.”

Fine jewelers are as discreet as undertakers and priests. Belmont admired the cameo extravagantly, as if he'd never seen it before, and sold Belle the most expensive cameo ear bobs he had.

Belle's new gowns were prints in muted shades. Her blouses were lawn and silk, with lace at the neckline. When Belle stood before Miss Smithers's pier glass, she didn't recognize the lady looking back at her.

"Mercy me," Belle gasped.

"Yes, Miss Watling." The dressmaker smiled, satisfied. "Yes indeed!”

Emboldened, Belle promenaded into the Kimball House, Atlanta's newest hotel. Glittering crystal chandeliers hung over a lobby whose blackand-white checkerboard floor was scattered with Oriental rugs. A porter waited, poised, beside Atlanta's first steam "elevator." Although Belle saw a few gentlemen she'd known in a business way, none recognized her. Over tea — "So refreshing, don't you think?" Belle told the waiter — Belle studied real ladies covertly, how they held their teacups, where they set their spoons, and how they folded their napkins.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Belle took tea at the Kimball House, and one fine Sunday she attended church — not St. Philip's Episcopal, where the Wilkeses worshiped, but the Second Presbyterian, which Belle figured wouldn't be so hoity-toity.

After the service, Belle introduced herself to the preacher as Mrs. Butler — the Savannah Butlers — visiting Atlanta kin.

"I hope you'll worship with us again, Mrs. Butler," the clergyman said.

Tazewell Watling wrote his mother about his friends at his English school, their sports, and his successes on the rugby team. Not long after he arrived at Shrewsbury School, he'd concluded a letter with "When Captain Butler visited London after the Confederate surrender, he telegraphed the Headmaster his intent to visit me. I asked the Head to tell Captain Butler that I would not see him.”

When she began her transformation, Belle wrote:

Dear Taz, Do you see many lords and ladies in England? Have you ever seen Queen Victoria? I would love to see the Queen and all those fancy castles.

Minette is running the house while I try on fancy dresses and drink tea at the Kimball House. Atlanta is so up-to-date! They've even got an elevator!

Say, what do you think of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoer' It's a funny old book, but I'm partial to it.

Dear son, there have been some mighty changes in your old Ma's life. I ain't going to let anybody tell me who I am!

Who knows, I might even marry somebody!

I miss you, dear Taz!

Your loving Ma, Ruth Belle Watling

Rhett was out of town two weeks in three and Belle forwarded his mail to the St. Nicholas Hotel in New York City, the Spotswood in Richmond, or the St. Louis in New Orleans.

When Rhett was in Atlanta, Belle lingered in his office, knitting while he did accounts, answered correspondence, and signed documents she didn't pretend to understand. Having learned from Godey's Lady's Book about British tea customs, every afternoon at three, she brought a tray with biscuits, cups, and her new china teapot.

Her Cyprians exchanged knowing looks.

Lisa, the country girl who'd been Belle's housemaid during the war, returned to the Chapeau Rouge looking for work. Lisa confessed she'd fallen on hard times, become nothing better than "a slut" and "a common drunk.”

She confessed, "Miz Watling, I can't half tell you the wickedness I got up to." Lisa hadn't touched a drop in six months, and Belle had always had a soft spot for the girl.

Two days later, Rhett came downstairs and met her.

Lisa licked her lips, "Please, Captain Butler, I ain't that girl no more.”

"Get out," Rhett said.

For fear he'd murder her, Lisa departed so precipitously that she left her belongings, which MacBeth bundled and took to the sporting house where she'd found work. Belle didn't dare ask Rhett why he'd banished the girl.

Some months later, Belle heard Lisa had been taken up by a rich Scalawag and Belle figured things had turned out as well for little Lisa as they were going to.

Three days after the Georgia legislature unanimously refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, a telegram came for Rhett: "Father died today. Burial Friday. Please come. Rosemary.”

"Oh Rhett, I'm sorry," Belle said.

"Funnily," Rhett said, "I am, too.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Miss Elizabeth Kneels

Langston Butler's anger had defied the undertaker's art: The poor man's attempts to pad and pinch the corpse's features into a pleasant expression had been defeated by the resolutely down-turned mouth, puckered lips, and frown lines no embalmer's wax could disguise.

Langston Butler had sought deference, obedience, and power. He'd never pleasured in the inconsequential: a heron's awkward flight, the evanescence of riffles on a sandy beach, the astonishing softness of the underside of a woman's arm. In his entire lifetime, Langston Butler had never once chanced being a fool.

Tennyson's poem echoed in Rhett's mind: " 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”

St. Michael's stained-glass windows had been taken out during Charleston's bombardment and hadn't been returned. Langston's bier was in the shadows of lantern light.

When the church doors were opened for the coffin to pass out, a lance of afternoon sunlight thrust into the sanctuary and haloed the pallbearers' heads. These were men of Langston's generation: Secessionists, Nullifiers, men whose abstract political theories had been refuted in blood.

The churchyard was bounded by the high iron fence Rhett and Tecumseh had jumped; how many years ago? How easily he could have impaled the horse or himself on those brutal spikes. How easily he might have been thrown, maimed, or killed. Life hadn't been worth much: a gewgaw, a trifle to be carelessly thrown away.

Lord, Rhett thought, was I so miserable then? His gaze found poor troubled Rosemary. Thank God she had her baby.

For a time at least, little Louis Valentine Ravanel would be all the world to her.

Rhett had heard reports of Andrew Ravanel's Klan activities. His sister's husband was becoming notorious. Andrew was so angry about "betrayals,”

"Southern rights,”

“niggers,”

“Carpetbaggers," Rhett couldn't talk to him.

What had happened to the boy Andrew had been? Where had that decent, brave, romantic, melancholy boy gone to? After the burial, Langston's negro mourners, Hercules and Solomon, made themselves scarce. Julian Butler stayed just long enough to relate some statehouse gossip and assure Rhett that if he ever needed anything from the legislature, anything at all... Julian had lost all his hair. His skull gleamed like a newly laid egg. Isaiah Watling was helping Elizabeth Butler into his wagon when Rosemary interrupted. "Mother, you'll be staying with us now. We've plenty of room. You can help with the baby.”

"May I?" Elizabeth's eyes widened as her old lips formed a smile. "May I? Why, I'd never considered I might. Rosemary," she beseeched, "Might I? I would so like to stay. I would! I'd attend vespers at St. Michael's. Vespers is such a gentle service.”

"Miss 'Lizabeth," Isaiah intoned. "Ain't we been prayin'? Ain't we been Bible readin' and prayin' mornin' and night?”

"I suppose so," Elizabeth said. "But God wants things to be nice. Remember what Jesus said about the lilies of the fields! St. Michael's kneeling stools are kinder to old knees than your bare wooden floor.”

"I'll fashion you a kneeling stool, soon as we get home to Broughton, Miss 'Lizabeth.”

"My mother will stay with Rosemary," Rhett said.

Isaiah Watling's merciless eyes found Rhett's.

Elizabeth babbled happily, "Oh dear Rhett, may I stay? I've always loved Charleston. Do you remember when you told your father that the only difference between Charlestonians and alligators is that alligators show their teeth before they bite? Oh Rhett, you were such a renegade!" She covered her mouth to hide her giggle.

Isaiah Watling ran his tongue around his teeth and the inside of his mouth. "I'll be goin', then. Miss 'Lizabeth, I'll pray for you long as I am able.”

"Why, Isaiah," Elizabeth Butler spoke as if to a remote kinsman, "bless your heart.”

The old man set his hat squarely on his head. "Miss Rosemary," he said, "I expect you'll take good care of Miss 'Lizabeth. I'd be obliged to you." Isaiah Watling's smile was unexpectedly kind. "Mr. Rhett Butler," he prophesied, "my day will come.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE The Wednesday-Night Democrats

Three days later, just before ten in the morning, Rhett entered Chapeau Rouge's kitchen. "Good morning, dear Belle." He kissed her cheek and cocked his head quizzically. "What a lovely dress. It flatters your complexion.

And that ribboned hair net! Even Charleston ladies aren't so fashionable.

Don't tell me, Belle. You have a beau!”

Belle flushed. "Don't be a silly. Who'd want an old cow like me?”

He took her hands and smiled the smile Belle loved. "I would, for one.”

He released her. "Now, Belle, let's have your news. What are Rufus Bullock and the Republicans up to? Have the Carpetbaggers looted the Georgia Railroad? Is Edgar Puryear lobbying for the Pennsylvania? What will the Yankees do about the Klan?”

Belle brewed coffee and brought Rhett up-to-date. Out back, MacBeth was whistling as he curried the horses.

Belle asked, "Was Papa at the burying?”

"He was. With your delightful cousin Josie.”

"Uncle Abraham's boy.”

"Josie Watling is a dangerous young man.”

Belle refilled Rhett's cup. "I haven't seen Uncle Abraham since we was back at Mundy Hollow. Our homeplace ain't — I mean isn't — five miles out of Jonesboro, but I never wanted to go back. I b'lieve Cousin Josie did some awful things in the War.”

"I hear Josie's in the Klan.”

Belle shrugged, "So's Archie Flytte, 'n' Frank Kennedy 'n' Mr. Ashley Wilkes. Nowadays, half Atlanta's gentlefolk got a white robe in their closet.

How's your sister farin'?”

"Drawn. Distracted." Rhett stretched luxuriously. "What's this about the Klan?”

"MacBeth won't drive Yankee officers home no more — no matter how drunk they is. It ain't safe for negroes to be out at night. And t'other night, Rhett, after we closed up, I thought I heard somethin', so I stuck my head out back, and there was riders beside the creek. Fifteen, twenty of em in white robes and pointy caps. They wasn't comin' for us, but they scared hell out of me.”

"The Yankees won't let armed night riders terrorize the countryside.”

Belle went to her icebox for a bowl of eggs. "Well, Rhett honey. Despite the world's troubles, the sun's shining and it's gonna be a fine day, and I'm of a mind to cook you breakfast. There's country ham, and it won't take five minutes to fry a mess of eggs.”

Rhett pushed his chair back. "Sorry, Belle, I've business downtown. I've bought stock in the Farmer's and Merchants' Bank. I've got to look in on my investment.”

"The hell you will!" Belle said, surprising both of them. "Captain Rhett Butler, you sit down at that kitchen table! Your darned business isn't near as important as tellin' me about your Daddy's buryin' 'n' Miss Rosemary 'n' all the rest.”

Ruefully, Rhett settled back. "Well, Belle, I guess I could eat something.”

Over breakfast, they conversed as companionably as an old married couple.

"How was Papa, then?”

Rhett shrugged. "Unchanged. I vetoed his plan to keep Mother at Broughton. If he were a different man, I'd say he's sweet on her." He drank coffee. "Andrew won't have free negroes in his home — not that volunteers would be easily found. Andrew's 'principles' mean Rosemary must care for an infant, plus a senile old woman.”

Belle softened, remembering. "Andrew was gentle, Rhett.”

"Well, he's a Grand Wizard now. Charleston's grandees flatter Andrew shamelessly but never invite him to their homes.”

"Poor Andrew.”

Rhett crumpled his napkin beside his plate. "You care for him still?”

"I care for the girl I was." Belle blinked. "I hope that girl's still inside of me some'eres. Tell me, Rhett; can you ever forgive your father for what he done?”

"Forgive him? Dear Belle, I forgave him years ago. Only a fool doesn't forgive. The worse fool forgets." Rhett gave her his flashing grin. "Now, let me tell you about my nephew. Master Louis Valentine Ravanel. What a set of lungs that boy has...”

That night in her lonely bed, Belle Watling went to sleep smiling, her pillow Rhett's compliment: "I would, for one.”

As per their custom, on New Year's Eve, over a glass of champagne, Belle paid Rhett his share of the profits from the sporting house. As she did every year, she reminded him why she'd named it as she had.

When she pressed him to check her figures, Rhett said, "Belle, if I had to check your books, I'd find another partner.”

That night, they both got a little tipsy.

hen Rhett was in town, the Chapeau Rouge was calmer and friendlier.

Rhett worked at his desk until late afternoon; then he went out to dinner and played cards at the Girl of the Period saloon until midnight.

As Taz's letters came, Belle laid them on Rhett's desk, and he returned them the next day without comment — even those where Taz complained about his bastardy.

In the privacy of her boudoir, Belle read her novels. She didn't care for Mr. Thackeray but enjoyed Mr. Dickens's Oliver Twist. Belle's eyes were wet when she closed that book. She read Mr. Hawthorne's novels, and one bitter February afternoon after Mrs. Elsing snubbed her in the Georgia Bank, Belle told Rhett, "Now I know how poor Hester Prynne felt.”

Rhett raised an eyebrow. " 'Hester Prynne,' Belle?”

w March came in like a lion. The United States Congress disbanded Georgia's legislature and the state became "Military District Number Three." White Georgians vilified Rufus Bullock and his Republicans as traitors.

Atlanta was restless that cold spring night. Federal sentries heard hoofbeats where no horsemen could possibly be; dogs set to howling across the city and quit as suddenly as they had begun. Small clouds scudded across the sky and smoke whipped sideways from the chimneys.

Chapeau Rouge's gentlemen callers were as jittery as the elm branches scratching the house. Yankee officers who usually talked too much were secretive, and normally reticent men spouted information. Minette could hardly keep them in brandy. Officers arrived, sat for a moment, then departed.

Whenever someone new came in, officers surrounded him, whispering questions.

That afternoon, a white woman had been attacked outside Shantytown, where many freed negroes lived. When she heard the dreadful news, Eloise swooned and had to be revived with smelling salts. The Cyprians were desperate for details: Had the white woman been raped? Beaten? Killed? In her bedroom, Belle was reading Mr. Dicken's Bleak House while her parlor stove glowed red and the wind rattled the stovepipe against its tin collar.

Belle was snug and happy when a ruckus erupted in the front of the house. Hastily, Belle threw on her pink robe and came into the parlor just as her callers were exiting onto the front porch and dooryard. A patrol was dismounting outside her gate.

"Did you arrest 'em, Bob?”

"Naw, but we kilt several. Huzzah!”

Belle pushed onto the porch. "What on earth is going on? Think of the neighbors! Come back inside! All of you!”

The officers ignored her. "How many'd you kill?”

"Dunno. They dragged 'em off.”

"How many of our boys got hit?”

"Callahan and Schmidt. Schmidt was gut-shot.”

"Captain Jaffery knows who they are and he's layin' for 'em. Captain Bateson's got patrols out. The bastards ain't slippin' away this time!”

Hot breath at Belle's ear. "Miss Belle, you got to come. You got to come right now." MacBeth's scar was pale against his dark skin.

Belle followed MacBeth through the house into the stableyard. The pungency of hard-ridden horses and the coppery stink of fresh blood made her ill.

"I got their horses in the stable," MacBeth whispered hoarsely. "I rub 'em down now.”

"Wait, MacBeth!" Belle said, but MacBeth kept walking.

The stair rail to Rhett's office was blood-smeared, and Belle hiked her robe over spattered risers. When she pushed the office door open, frightened eyes turned to her.

Pittypat's brother, Henry Hamilton, dropped his head back into his hands. Hugh Elsing resumed whispering to old man Merriwether.

Dr. Meade was probing a wound in Ashley Wilkes's shoulder. Whitelipped with pain, Melanie Wilkes's husband lay on the daybed while, kneeling beside him, Rhett dropped one bloody cloth into a bucket and patted the wound with a clean one.

Hugh Elsing hissed, "We wanted to teach the niggers to keep their black hands off our womenfolk.”

Dr. Meade scrabbled through his bag for forceps. "Wilkes," the doctor said, "this will hurt like blazes. Do you want leather to bite? You mustn't cry out.”

With a terse nod, Ashley refused.

The big elm tree's branches whisked the clapboard like a broom. Rhett looked up. "Sorry, Belle. I didn't know where else to bring them. The Yankees were on our heels.”

"And you?" Belle asked. "Was you with 'em, Rhett?”

"Me? A Klansman?" He snorted. "I was playing stud tonight with two captains too drunk to keep their mouths shut. Seems they were keeping an eye on these gentlemen. Our brave Klansmen meant to ride through Shantytown shooting any negro too slow to get out of their way. The Yankees set a trap.

"I rode to warn them, but they were in the trap already." Rhett shrugged. "So I sprang it before the Yankees could. Mr. Colt's revolvers make a lovely racket. The Yankees thought I was a brigade!”

Ashley bucked under Dr. Meade's probe and Rhett used his whole strength to hold him down.

Hugh Elsing persisted, "The Fourteenth Amendment gives the vote to negroes and takes it from every man who saw Confederate service. We are beneath the conqueror's boot...”

Rhett flared. "If it wasn't for your womenfolk, I'd let you all hang.

What in pluperfect hell did you think you were doing?”

Belle's front door slammed and officers careened into the yard below the window, serenading. "Just before the battle, Mother ...”

The room got so deathly still, the plunk of the bullet into the bucket made everyone jump. Rhett stifled Ashley's moan. Below, a Yankee stepped around the corner to pee and hummed as his water splashed the ground.

Belle touched Rhett's arm. "Mr. Wilkes ... will he — “

"He'll live. Christ, what a mess! There are two dead men in the basement of the old Sullivan house. I stuffed their robes up the chimney. They called themselves 'The Wednesday-Night Democrats.' Clever, yes? Under that guise, they met to decide which uppity negro needed their attentions.”

His face was grim. "The fools could hang for this night's work.”

Grandpa Merriwether's face was so red, Belle feared he'd burst a blood vessel. "Get us horses, Butler! We can pay. We'll run tonight. We'll run to Texas.

Belle couldn't forget how kind Mrs. Wilkes had been. She asked, "Couldn't you just say they were here?”

Rhett snorted. "Atlanta's fanciest gentlemen in a sporting house?”

"My girls ... my Cyprians will swear they were here all night. They come upstairs — every Wednesday night, you said? — just a few girls. The Wednesday-Night Democrats are extremely discreet.”

Rhett mulled her idea before breaking into the biggest grin Belle had ever seen on his face. He chuckled. "My, my, Miss Belle. What will people say?”

Dr. Meade peeked outside and drew the curtain.

Rhett gestured to the frightened, thoroughly subdued Wednesday- Night Democrats. "Atlanta's most respectable citizens, dear me. Dear, dear me. Belle, you're as clever as you are good." He cleared his throat. "Boys, I sure as hell hope you're good at charades.”

After Dr. Meade bandaged Ashley's shoulder, Rhett fashioned a sling and draped the man in his cloak. Rhett patted raw whiskey on Ashley's pale cheeks.

Calm as General Lee issuing battle orders, Rhett spelled out everyone's roles in the performance. "Wilkes," Rhett said, "if we can't convince them, you're hung. The Yankees will be waiting at your house, so we must be very drunk, falling-down drunk. Elsing, can you play the drunken fool? I know you can play the sober one.”

When Rhett splashed Ashley's shirt with whiskey, the reek overpowered the blood smell.

"Dr. Meade? Mr. Merriwether? You'll have starring roles!”

"What about me?" Henry Hamilton demanded.

Rhett thought for a minute before shaking his head. "Sorry, Henry, all our speaking parts are cast. You'll have to be stage manager.”

Rhett and Hugh Elsing supported Ashley down the back stairs and out where MacBeth saddled their horses. The cold air revived Ashley and he mounted without assistance. In the saddle, he swayed for a perilous instant before he straightened to say, "Do or die trying.”

After they rode away, Belle pressed a double eagle into her bouncer's hand. "MacBeth, you don't know nothin'.”

MacBeth's eyes were old with understanding. "No, ma'am, I never knew that Miz Kennedy was skeered this afternoon and I never heard no Klansmen was gonna shoot up Shantytown and I never heard no Yankees was goin' to bushwhack 'em. Never heard nothin' about Captain Butler savin' the Kluxers.

No, ma'am. I'ze just a dumb nigger. I don't know nothin'.”

"You said ... Mrs. Kennedy?”

"Miz Kennedy what owns the sawmills.”

"Was she ... hurt?”

"Naw, Miss Belle. Two thiefs grabbed at her, but that Tara nigger, Big Sam, he kilt one n' chased the other'n off. Skeered Miz Kennedy plumb to death.”

"Just 'skeered'?”

"In Shantytown, one skeered white lady is a world of trouble.”

Listening for Federal patrols, the three riders slipped through Atlanta's dark streets and alleyways. As they neared Ashley Wilkes's home, the night air seemed to thicken. Wind swirled dust at their horse's hooves.

"Sing, my thespians, sing! Make a joyful noise unto the Yankees!" Rhett leaned back and bellowed Sherman's hated marching song:

"How the darkies shouted when they heard the joyful sound,

How the turkeys gobbled which our commissary found,

How the sweet potatoes even started from the ground,

While we were marching through Georgia.

"Elsing! Damn it! Sing!”

Shouting and weeping Sherman's anthem, three drunks rollicked up to the house where Captain Tom Jaffery and his men were waiting to arrest Klansmen with blood on their hands.

At the Chateau Rouge, Belle directed Act Two.

Dr. Meade tried to refuse his role. "I'm to brawl in a ... a sporting house? I've never been in a sporting house!”

"More's the pity. You're in one now. Might be you'd druther hang?”

When Meade patted too little whiskey on himself, Henry Hamilton doused him so thoroughly, Grandpa Merriwether pocketed his pipe. The thoroughly respectable Henry yanked their shirts out of their trousers, popped Grandpa Merriwether's top vest button, and tugged Dr. Meade's collar askew.

Hands on hips, Belle surveyed them. "Gents, you sure look the part. I spect you got hidden talents.”

Shorty afterward, two of Atlanta's first citizens, apparently drunk as lords, tumbled into Belle's parlor, punching each other ineffectually. Belle yelled for MacBeth to fetch the provosts. Since some officers in the parlor were supposed to be searching for Klansman, this occasioned a general exodus as, getting into the spirit of things, Meade and Merriwether punched and slapped each other, shouting invective rarely heard in the Chapeau Rouge.

The provosts found two gentlemen rolling in Belle's flower bed. Their muffled threats and curses were indistinguishable from muffled laughter.

Protesting that hers was an orderly house, Belle wrung her hands as the provosts separated the combatants and arrested them. From the corner of her mouth, Belle told MacBeth, "You don't know nothin'.”

"I'ze an ignorant nigger," MacBeth assured her.

Two hours after the provosts left, Archie Flytte brought a buggy around the back of the Chapeau Rouge with the bodies he'd collected from the Sullivan house.

"Rhett fooled the Yankees?" Belle asked anxiously.

Archie spat.

Belle was weak-kneed with relief. "Mrs. Wilkes's husband ... he's safe?”

"I reckon.”

Belle eyed him curiously. "You don't like Captain Butler, do you?”

"Used to be beholden to Butler. I work for Mrs. Wilkes now.”

MacBeth and Archie laid out two dead men in the vacant lot behind the Chapeau Rouge. Archie placed a recently fired pistol beside each man's cold right hand and doused their uncaring faces with whiskey. He asked MacBeth, "Nigger, you scared of the Klan?”

"Oh yes, sir," MacBeth replied. "I mighty scared.”

"Don't got to be scared of these two." Archie nudged a corpse with his foot. "They's 'gentlemen.' “

He tucked the empty bottle into a dead man's armpit.

The Atlanta Journal reported that two Atlanta gentlemen had gotten drunk, quarreled, and shot each other. The city was shocked and fascinated.

Belle and her Cyprians were summoned to Federal headquarters, where they swore on the holy Bible that the suspected Klansmen, Ashley Wilkes, Hugh Elsing, Henry Hamilton, Dr. Meade, and Grandfather Merriwether, had been in the Chapeau Rouge on the night in question, carousing with the notorious Captain Butler, as was their Wednesday-night custom. The group called themselves the Wednesday-Night Democrats to deceive their wives. "They raise hell at my joint, and they're cheapskates to boot," Belle wailed.

The Yankee officers couldn't keep grins off their faces. The Atlantans who'd snubbed them and their wives had been dramatically and publicly brought low.

Afterward, when the Yankee officers' wives smiled condescendingly to the wives of the Wednesday-Night Democrats, those proud Southern women would gladly have seen Rhett Butler hung.

Rhett Butler had rewritten the story. He'd transformed Frank Kennedy from a Klansman killed during a Shantytown raid to a quarrelsome drunk who died in a stupid fight in a vacant lot behind a brothel. For Frank's funeral, Rhett Butler dressed in a dark blue London suit and carried a rakish malacca cane.

"Do you got to go?" Belle asked listlessly.

"Not go? Not go, my dear? Aren't I the scoundrel who foiled the wicked Yankees while making Atlanta's best citizens look like hypocrites? Of course I'm going. I intend to crow.”

"Miss Scarlett will be there?”

"Where else would you expect Frank's grieving widow to be?”

Rhett had a red rose in his lapel. Belle wondered where he'd gotten it.

Her roses were still in bud.

"Rhett, you're not going to ... Not... again?”

He kissed her forehead. As a brother might.

The funeral was at three that afternoon and Rhett didn't come back to Chapeau Rouge afterward. That evening, Belle sat at her dressing table, staring at the silly, vulgar woman looking back at her. A lady? What the hell had she been thinking? Minette stuck her head in. "Miss Belle, chere. It is payday...”

"Yeah," Belle said. She unfastened her blue faille dress and let it fall to the floor. She plucked the cameo ear bobs from her ears and dropped them in a little velvet bag. She pinched color into her cheeks, and with her carmine lip rouge, she slashed a whore's mouth over her own.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Some Damn Mistake

Rhett was in England when MacBeth asked Belle if he could store some old furniture in Rhett's office.

Belle frowned. "No, you can't. Captain Butler will want his office when he comes back.”

MacBeth said, "No'm. Captain Butler ain't comin' back here. He be with Miz Kennedy when he come back.”

"You're a damn fool. He gave up on her years ago.”

MacBeth said, "Uh-huh.”

Belle got a strange note from Taz.

Dear Maman,

I am so happy for you — and for myself of course. Captain Butler has invited me to celebrate at the Brooks Club with his English friends!

Your loving son, Tazewell

This puzzling message was followed by silence: no explanation and no further letters.

"Must be some damn mistake." Belle was whistling in the dark.

Yankees, Carpetbaggers, and ex-Confederates kept a polite truce within the Chapeau Rouge, but those same gentlemen who used one another's Christian names in Belle's parlor led Yankee patrols or rode with the Klansmen those patrols were pursuing.

In December, Rufus Bullock gave the keynote address at the "Black and Tan" constitutional convention. The convention, which included thirty-seven negro delegates, rewrote Georgia's constitution. For the first time, women could own property in their own name and negro males could vote.

Georgia's newspapers mocked the delegates, their abilities, speech, and manners.

"Uppity" negroes and white Republicans felt the lash of the Klan's displeasure.

Only Klansman and Yankee patrols rode by night.

The day after Christmas, Belle received a letter from Rhett — the first he'd ever written her. She took it into her bedroom, sat, and poured a large brandy before opening it.

Dear Belle,

I cant say I'm easy or comfortable writing, but it's best you get the news from me. Taz is in New Orleans. The boy is well — so far as I know — but he's mad as a wet hen. I guess I can't blame him.

The letter rattled in Belle's hands. Taz, in New Orleans?

Rob Campbell, my banker, is a Scot who was a junior partner when we met but now heads his firm. I trust him, and when I decided to curtail Taz's military career, I wrote Rob for help.

When Taz landed in England, he was taken to Rob's London office. Taz was still wearing his Confederate uniform. Rob asked, "Whatever shall we do with you, young man?”

"Why, sir, should you do anything?”

"Because my friend Rhett Butler has asked me to look after you. “

"I thank you for your concern, sir, but I would not be more obligated to Mr. Butler than I already am. “

Rob's tailor measured the boy for new clothes, but instead of waiting for them, he sent Taz off to Shrewsbury. Rob's a Shrewsbury "Old Boy. “

Did I say Rob was clever? Taz arrived at that school in his tattered gray uniform, which did more for his acceptance than a peerage might have.

Hell, sons of peers were a dime a dozen at Shrewsbury. But no other boy had soldiered in a war.

About this time, Federal officials appeared at Rob's bank with impudent questions about my accounts. I'd forewarned Rob and he was ready for them.

I came to London, where Rob was stonewalling the Federals. Though there was smoke aplenty, Rob convinced me there wasn't too much fire.

When I telegraphed his Headmaster, that gentleman said Taz didn't wish to see me. I might have forced the issue but didn't want to upset the boy more than he already was. The Headmaster assured me Taz had made a promising start, particularly in mathematics and French. He speaks Creole, but the mathematics surprised me.

Fortunately, Rob Campbell had taken a liking to your son.

Belle whispered, "Course he did. Who wouldn't love my Taz?”

At the end of that first term, Rob invited Tazewell to spend his holidays with the Campbells.

Rob's got a fine plump wife and two daughters, shy Claire and Amanda, who will be a real head turner when she grows up. Anyway, the Campbells' home became Taz's. I suspect Rob hoped he and Claire might form an attachment one day. I know Rob intended to offer your son a place at his firm after he completed school.

I got regular reports from Rob but heard nothing from Tazewell himself.

Although I would have preferred a friendlier relationship, I am not unaccustomed to the villain's role so long as your son needed me in it.

Taz is in New Orleans because of me. It's my doing my mistake, and I wish it hadn't happened but I can't hold the boy's hand until he grows up.

I had business with Rob Campbell, and afterward we strolled over to Burlington Arcade to visit London's fancy jewelers. Since Sutliff's makes tiaras for the Queen, I figured they'd be good enough for Scarlett. Poor Rob was aghast when I bought the biggest, gaudiest engagement ring he'd ever seen. He swallowed his sense of proprieties, offered congratulations, and suggested a celebration at his club three days hence.

I telegraphed Shrewsbury to invite Taz down to London for the party, and that's where I slipped up. Either my telegram was ambiguous or the Headmaster misinformed him. Anyway, dear Belle, somehow Taz got it in his head I was going to marry you!

Belle put the letter down, downed her drink, and said to nobody in particular, "Rhett Butler and Belle Watling? Married? Jesus Loving Christ!”

Brooks is a stuffy London Club and Rob's guests were dusty financial types, but Belle, you would have been proud of your son. I was glad to see him, presumed he'd forgiven me, and we spun yarns about Fort Fisher, playing off each other like Tambo and Mr. Bones. When I said, "Your corporal said you made a better soldier than I did, " everyone laughed Once we were seated, with waiters standing by, Rob rose to offer his toast, but Tazewell interrupted. "Excuse me, sirs. Mr. Campbell, Mr. Butler, honored guests... before festivities begin, I have a confession to make.”

Belle, your boy nearly broke my heart. He made a heartfelt speech about all I'd done for him, his eternal gratitude. He mentioned my kindness, generosity, and — Lord help us — my wisdom.

These fathers and grandfathers were all for filial gratitude and heartily applauded Taz's sentiments.

Then Rob lifted his glass, "To my friend Captain Rhett Butler and his betrothed Mrs. Scarlett Kennedy. “

The color left Taz's face and I thought he was going to faint. Too late, I understood that Taz had thought I was marrying you, and now felt like the greatest fool on the face of the earth.

If grown men dread humiliation, young men die rather than endure it.

I've known young fools who jumped horses over five-foot spiked fences for a two-dollar wager.

Tazewell set his glass down untouched and ran from Brooks. I followed but lost him in the damn fog.

When Tazewell didn't return to Shrewsbury, I hired a detective, who learned that your son had booked passage for New Orleans.

So Taz is back where he started from, sadder, I am sure. I pray he is wiser.

I'm sorry, Belle. I wouldn't have had this happen for the world.

Yours always, Rhett

On New Year's Eve, Belle Watling put on her prettiest dress and took a bottle of champagne and her account books to Rhett Butler's office. That year, Belle drank alone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE The Quadroon Ball

That spring, Republican Rufus Bullock defeated ex-Confederate General George Gordon for Governor. For the first time in history, there would be negroes in the Georgia legislature.

Atlanta's grande dames saw the betrothal of the Widow Kennedy to Rhett Butler — Dark Prince of War Profiteers — as one more sign of moral decay. The grande dames vowed they would never forgive Butler for his shoddy trick. The Wednesday-Night Democrats' wives had received the Yankee ladies' understanding smiles: "Boys will be boys, won't they, dear?”

Each smile had felt like a blow.

Mrs. Merriwether admired Scarlett's ring too extravagantly: "My dear!

I don't think I've ever seen such an enormous stone!" Mrs. Meade recalled Frank Kennedy too fondly. "Why, it's so hard to believe poor dear Frank is gone.”

Aunt Eulalie penned "the most difficult letter of my life," begging Scarlett to cancel her nuptials. "Please don't disgrace the Robillards again,”

she pleaded.

Scarlett wanted a lavish wedding, but Rhett thought better of it.

"Why give the old biddies the satisfaction of spurning our invitations?”

he said.

In a small ceremony, Rhett and Scarlett became Mr. and Mrs. Butler and afterward took sherry with a few guests in the rectory. Melanie Wilkes admired Rosemary Ravanel's toddler. "Cherish these years," Melanie advised.

"They fly away too soon.”

The kindness in Melanie's face touched Rosemary's heart. "My daughter, Meg, was killed in the war, but I pray for her every single night. How silly I am! Praying for a child already in heaven.”

"You're not silly at all," Melanie replied. "Your Meg knows you love her. Can't you feel her watching over you? Here, take my handkerchief. Your Louis is such a sweet little boy.”

Thus, Rosemary Ravanel and Melanie Wilkes became friends.

Rhett had leased one of Mr. Pullman's newfangled sleeping cars to convey the newlyweds to New Orleans. When the wedding party arrived at the train station, half of Atlanta was gawking at the marvel: a private parlor car that transformed itself into a rolling bedroom. What was the world coming to? Rhett pretended they'd come to honor the bride and groom. "Good afternoon, Mrs. Merriwether. So good of you to come. I regret we couldn't invite our friends to our wedding, but Scarlett — you know how shy she is — Scarlett insisted on a private affair. Ah, Mrs. Elsing! How kind you are to see us off. How is my good friend Hugh?" He winked. "Haven't Hugh and I had ourselves some wild times!”

As offended ladies withdrew, Scarlett suppressed her giggles.

On that triumphant note, on a beautiful May afternoon, Rhett and Scarlett Butler boarded a railroad car paneled in Philippine mahogany and green velvet. The rose petals in the crystal sconces glistened with moisture, the tablecloth was damask, the Sillery perfectly chilled.

When Rhett raised his glass to his bride, Scarlett announced, "I never said I loved you, you know.”

Rhett's glass hesitated. "You pick this moment to remind me? Scarlett, what incredible timing!”

"I'm the only woman you know who'll tell you the truth. You've often told me I am.”

Rhett shook his head ruefully. "Yes, honey, I suppose I did. Sometimes I say the goddamnedest things.”

As dusk settled on the piedmont, their porter lit lanterns, drew the curtains, turned down their bed, and closed the door behind him.

"Tara is just beyond those hills," Scarlett mused. "When I was a young girl, how could I have imagined ...”

The backs of Rhett Butler's hands were furred with the softest curly hair. Except for the creases across his knuckles where the flesh was as white as hers, Rhett's fingers were tanned. His strong fingers could untie a bow or unhook a stay as delicately as if a cat had brushed Scarlett's shivering skin.

In the morning, as their train rushed through the Alabama countryside at a breathtaking clip, the porter brought steaming-hot water for Scarlett's hip bath.

Rhett Butler sat in an armchair, smoking a cigar.

"What are you looking at?" Scarlett tried to cover her breasts with a washcloth.

Rhett laughed until Scarlett started laughing, too, and the washcloth fell away.

They had their first quarrel soon after they got to New Orleans. "Why can't we move to the St. Charles?" Scarlett demanded.

"This" — she dismissed their luxurious suite — "is the Creole hotel.”

"Yes, dearest." Rhett pressed studs into his cuffs. "Which is why we are here. The St. Charles caters to Americans. Americans are great engineers, moneymakers, and moralizers, but they don't know how to eat. If you don't know how to eat, you cannot know how to make love.”

"Rhett!”

He grinned at his bride. "I've rather enjoyed our marital relations.”

"That doesn't mean we need to talk about them.”

"When food and love are forbidden topics, conversation descends to politics." As an orator might, Rhett set his left hand in the small of his back.

"Tell me, Mrs. Butler, will Georgia ever be free of Carpetbagger rule? Is Governor Bullock's concern for the negro a ruse to get their votes?”

When he ducked, Scarlett's shoe clattered against the shutters behind him.

That night, the lobby was thronged with well-dressed European travelers and wealthy Creoles. When Rhett asked the doorman to summon a cab, Scarlett said, "Rhett, I didn't know you spoke French.”

"Creole isn't exactly French, honey. Parisians can't make head or tails of it.”

The doorman drew himself up to his full five foot two. "Monsieur, that is because our French is ancient and pure. The Parisian French have bastardized a beautiful language.”

Rhett's inclined his head. "Sans doute, monsieur. “

Every morning, disdaining the hotel waiters, Rhett went to the kitchen to fetch Scarlett's breakfast tray. Scarlett's day began with caresses and beignets and the bitterest, blackest coffee she'd ever tasted.

"My dear, you have jam at the corner of your mouth.”

"Lick it off.”

They never left the hotel before noon.

Rhett knew every shop in the city and fashionable dressmakers greeted him with a kiss on the cheek and news of old acquaintances. "English, please." Rhett smiled. "My wife is a Georgia lady.”

The new high waistlines flattered Scarlett's neck and bodice and she bought so many gowns, Rhett had them packed in steamer trunks and shipped home. They bought a Saint Bernard puppy for Wade and a coral bracelet for little Ella. Though Scarlett said she'd never wear it, Rhett bought a shimmering red petticoat for Mammy.

One languorous, sensual day blurred into another. Scarlett hadn't been flattered so shamelessly since she was a maiden. Despite her wedded state, more than one Creole gentlemen made it clear he would gladly have taken matters beyond admiration. Rhett took no offense at the flirtations but never left her alone with another man.

New Orleans winked at behavior that would have set Atlanta tongues wagging. Scarlett could get tipsy. She could play chemin de fer. She could flirt so outrageously, Atlanta biddies would have thought it adulterous.

At Sunday Mass in St. Louis cathedral, Rhett leaned over to whisper a joke so crude, it set her choking and coughing. Rhett joked when he should have been solemn, was solemn when he should have jeered. He was delighted by Louisiana's Carpetbagger legislature, praising its every folly, reveling in its corruption, as if madness were the natural state of affairs.

Scarlett adored Creole cooking. Lunching at Antoine's one afternoon, when Scarlett speared the last mussel from Rhett's plate he grinned. "If you grow round and fat, I shall take a Creole mistress.”

Scarlett looked for the waiter. "Let's order more crawfish.”

Rhett reached across the table, took her left hand, and with his thumb caressed the tender web between Scarlett's thumb and forefinger.

Hoarsely, Scarlett said, "I don't want any more. Quick, Rhett. Let's go back to the hotel.”

One afternoon, Rhett hired a vis-a-vis to drive them along the levee, where Mississippi River paddle wheelers were exchanging cargoes with deepwater ships. Since the Federals captured New Orleans early in the War, the city hadn't been bombarded and became the South's busiest port. The stevedores were immigrant Irish, glad to have twelve hours' work for fifty cents. They lived in shantytowns behind the levee with worn-out wives and too many squalling, dirty children. Startled to hear her father Gerald's familiar accent, Scarlett gripped Rhett's arm.

"What is it, sweetheart?”

"Promise me, Rhett. Oh, promise me I'll never be poor again.”

Per New Orleans custom, they dined late and afterward attended balls — public and private, costume and masked. Or they gambled at the Boston Club (named from the popular card game, not the Yankee city). After Scarlett understood bezique, she won more than she lost.

One night during a memorable run of luck, Rhett insisted they leave immediately.

Scarlett nursed her anger until they were in their cab. "I was having fun! I was winning! You don't want me to have my own money!”

"My dear, money means much more to you than it does to me.”

"You want to own me!”

"Money means even more to the gentlemen whose pockets you were emptying. I know those particular gentlemen. I've known them for years.”

Scarlett tossed her head. "Why should I give a darn about them?”

"You needn't, but I must. Since they cannot possibly seek satisfaction from a lady, they must challenge her escort. The levee is damp at daybreak, and I'd hate to catch a chill.”

Several evenings, Rhett went out on business, leaving Scarlett in the hotel to try on her purchases.

One tiny cloud drifted across Scarlett's happiness. The young man was dressed soberly, more like senior clerk than a man about town. He was usually in the lobby when they passed through, leaning against a pillar with his arms crossed or sitting in a club chair reading a newspaper. He chatted familiarly with the doorman.

He watched them come into the St. Louis and watched them go out.

He frequented the same restaurants.

"Who is that boy?" Scarlett whispered. "He was at the Boston Club last night. Why is he interested in us?”

"You needn't worry yourself, dear," Rhett replied. "He fancies he has a grievance with me.”

"What grievance? Who is he?”

"How kind you are to worry about me," Rhett said. "Really, you needn't.”

"Worry about you?" Scarlett sniffed. "Don't be silly. You can take care of yourself.”

Still, the young man was a cloud.

Those profiting under the Reconstruction government were building homes in what, not long ago, had been truck gardens outside the city.

This "Garden District" was growing so rapidly that fine new mansions were fronted by streets where municipal horsecars sank to their hubs in mud.

Unfinished mansions were surrounded by stacks of raw lumber (which Scarlett thought compared poorly with Georgia pine). Evenings were punctuated by carpenters' hammers tapping away like woodpeckers until it was too dark to see.

Captain Butler and his beautiful bride were invited to fêtes where cotton factors and riverboat owners mingled with hard-faced men whose easy laughter never reached their eyes. Although they were expensively dressed, their lapels were too wide and their trousers too tight. They favored bright parrot colors. These men spoke of Cuba and Nicaragua as casually as if they'd just come from there and might go back tomorrow. Their women were too young, too pretty, too fashionably dressed, and didn't try to conceal their boredom.

The hard men were more courteous to Rhett than to one another.

"How do they know you?”

"From time to time, I've put a little business their way.”

In a Touro Street mansion, a house so new Scarlett could smell the wallpaper paste, an old woman introduced herself. "I am Toinette Sevier.”

Her smile was charmingly insincere. "Sevier is my maiden name. I prefer to forget my husbands. You are a Robillard, I believe. You favor your mother.”

Scarlett felt like someone had stepped on her grave.

Toinette Sevier's skin was age-spotted and her pink scalp gleamed through thinning white hair. Her jeweled rings, bracelets, and necklace proved she'd once been a desirable woman.

"Ellen and I were Savannah belles too many years ago. I did know Ellen's beau, Philippe, rather better than I knew your mother.”

Philippe! A name Scarlett had banished to the furthest corner of her memory. On her deathbed, Scarlett's mother's final plea had been for "Philippe!”

A servant replaced Toinette's glass with another. Her smile was reminiscent.

"Philippe was a flame that grows hotter and brighter, until it consumes everything — or should I say everyone — it touches.”

Scarlett didn't want to hear another word. Ellen O'Hara had been the finest lady, the most perfect mother... Scarlett drew herself up to reply, "My mother never spoke of the man.”

"She wouldn't." The woman's old eyes had seen everything. "There are Catholics and Catholics, my dear, and Ellen Robillard was a penitential one.”

In New Orleans, Scarlett was happy — almost too happy. She did miss her sawmills: the buying and selling, the satisfaction of besting shrewd businessmen.

And she missed Ashley. She missed his face, the now-too-rare spark in his tired, dear brown eyes. Ashley Wilkes was Tara and Twelve Oaks and everything Scarlett had ever desired! In this mood, with Ashley on her mind, she couldn't remember why she'd married Rhett Butler.

Scarlett resented Rhett's power. His embrace overwhelmed her resistance; his kisses won his way with her. Scarlett just knew Rhett wanted her to become someone less than she was: a devoted wife who was as good as she was stupid. In this half-bored, half-resentful mood, Scarlett went through Rhett's portfolio one morning while he was fetching her breakfast.

Some of Rhett's papers were in Spanish and bore elaborate wax seals.

She found bills of lading — one for "two trunks, by rail to the National Hotel, Atlanta. HANDLE WITH CARE!"; one for Wade's Saint Bernard puppy: "Special Handling! Express car!" She found a bill from Peake and Bennett, London tailors, a letter of credit from the Banque de New Orleans in an amount that pleasantly surprised her, and a ticket for a ball, two nights hence, at the Honeysuckle Ballroom.

One ticket. Not two.

Of course Rhett had been with other women. He'd made no secret of that. But Scarlett had assumed that now they were married, she would satisfy him. The "business" Rhett went out for at night — what sort of "business”

was transacted between midnight and dawn? Scarlett's ears burned.

She'd been a fool!

When Rhett brought her breakfast, Scarlett was in her petticoat before the pier glass. "Look how fat I am," she announced.

When he put his arms around her, she stiffened. "I won't eat anything, ever again, no matter how hungry I get. Oh Rhett, I remember when a man could put both hands around my waist and touch his fingertips." When Rhett's fingertips failed to meet by three inches, Scarlett burst into tears.

That afternoon, Rhett went out again on his mysterious "business.”

Scarlett went to the lobby, where the watchful young man nodded politely.

The doorman was loading a Yankee family into a cab when their little boy kicked his shin. "The young monsieur is certainly a lively boy! Yes, madame, he is certainly lively.”

The doorman pocketed his five-cent tip, massaged his ankle, and turned to Scarlett. "Yes, madame? Artaud is at your service.”

"I wish a ticket for the Honeysuckle Ballroom.”

The doorman smiled like someone who hears a joke he doesn't understand.

"Madame?”

"The Honeysuckle Ballroom? Surely you've heard of it.”

Artaud cautiously admitted he might have heard of that establishment.

It was on Bourbon Street, or was it Beaubein? Scarlett offered a banknote. "The ticket is ten dollars, I believe.”

The doorman put his hands behind his back, "Je suis desole, madame.

Desole! I cannot help you.”

The watchful young man paused in the doorway, "Pardon, madame.

White ladies are not welcome at the Quadroon Ball." The young man strolled away, whistling.

"What, pray, is a 'Quadroon Ball'?”

The doorman produced a pained smile. "I cannot know, madame, and if I could know, I could not say. Forgive me, madame..." He turned to an elderly French lady who wished to know which church had an eleven o'clock Mass.

In the Boston Club that evening, Toinette Sevier was accompanied by a good-looking Creole half her age.

"Excuse me, madame ...”

"Ah, Mrs. Butler. I understand you fancy bezique?”

Scarlett didn't want chitchat, "Madame Sevier," she asked, "are you respectable?”

The old woman chuckled, "My dear, old age makes all of us respectable.

I am far more respectable than I ever wished to be. Henri, be a dear and fetch me some champagne.”

"Then you don't know about the Quadroon Ball.”

She clapped her wrinkled hands in glee. "On the contrary, Mrs. Butler.

Every lady knows about the Quadroon Ball, but she'd risk her reputation admitting it.”

"Will you risk your reputation?”

"My dear. My reputation has been blacked more thoroughly than an old boot. What do you wish to know?”

"Why can't I buy a ticket?”

"Because Quadroon Balls are for white gentlemen and quadroon girls seeking connections with them. Neither negro men nor white ladies may attend. A few daring white women have slipped in — it is a masked ball — hoping to catch their husbands en flagrante. When they were discovered, the city buzzed about it for weeks. Delicious scandals. Absolutely delicious.”

Rhett was out when the porter delivered an envelope to their room.

The envelope was of good quality and on it, in a slanting hand, someone had written, "Compliments of a friend." Scarlett found a ticket for the Honeysuckle Ballroom inside.

When Rhett returned, he eyed Scarlett quizzically. "What are you up to, my little sparrow hawk? You were grouchy this morning. Now butter wouldn't melt in your mouth.”

"Oh Rhett, I'm not feeling well. I can't go out tonight.”

Rhett eyed her skeptically. "I wouldn't want you to waste away. I'll fetch something from Antoine's.”

Scarlett was in bed with the shutters closed and a cold cloth on her forehead when Rhett returned with her favorite delicacies: clams swimming in butter, delicately crusted prawns, a langoustine opened like a pink-and-white flower.

"Oh," she said. "I couldn't eat a thing. Here." She patted the bed. "Sit beside me.”

Men are such deceivers! Rhett seemed almost... concerned. He touched her forehead. "May's too early for the fevers. Shall I fetch a doctor?”

"No, my darling husband. You're the only medicine I need.”

He shook his head. "Then I'm sorry to disappoint you. I must go out for a few hours.”

"Where are you going, darling?" Her voice was light and unconcerned.

"Nowhere you need to worry about, my poor darling. Some business I must attend to." Rhett leaned closer, his eyes glowing. "What do you have on your mind, my dear? Are you thinking again? Your angelic countenance betrays you.”

"Can't I go with you?”

He laughed. "No, my dear, you certainly cannot. Anyway, as I seem to recall, you aren't feeling well.”

He donned the frock coat the tailor had delivered yesterday and the silk foulard he'd worn at their wedding. Rhett bent to kiss her forehead. "Try to eat something," he said, and closed the door softly behind him.

She plundered her wardrobe, dropping rejected gowns on the floor. Yes, her blue taffeta — Rhett'd never seen her in it. And that new black mantilla!

She lay flat on the bed, cinching her corset until she gasped. She braided her hair into coils tucked under her blue velvet hat. Her sequined half mask concealed everything but her eyes.

Carriages deposited gentlemen outside the Honeysuckle Ballroom and slipped around the corner into Bienville Street. The negro doorman was dressed as a Zouave in baggy red pants, a short blue jacket, a broad red sash, and a Turkish fez, which perched atop his huge skull like the turret of an ironclad.

"Bonsoir, madame. Comment allez-vous?”

He hesitated before accepting Scarlett's ticket. "Et la Maman de vous, mamselle?"Yie. peered closely at her. "Mamselle, are you lost? Have you perhaps arrived at the wrong address?”

The watchful young man appeared and took Scarlett's arm. "I see you got my ticket." Scarlett's escort made a joke in rapid-fire Creole and the doorman laughed and bowed them inside.

As they ascended a broad carpeted staircase, Scarlett asked, "What did you tell him?”

"A crude joke. At your expense, I'm afraid.”

"How dare you!”

They paused on the mezzanine before white doors. "Mrs. Butler, you wish to attend the Quadroon Ball?”

"I do, but ...”

"Well then, madame..." The young man opened the doors for her.

The Honeysuckle Ballroom had high ceilings with intricate plaster cornices, white-and-gold wainscoting, and furniture in the Empire style. Tall windows opened onto a wrought-iron balcony where gentlemen could smoke. Refreshment tables lined one end of the hall.

Across the room, Rhett was deep in conversation with a middle-aged mulatto woman wearing a dark brown dress with a Baptist bodice and neckline.

Scarlett's escort disappeared.

Scarlett had expected something wicked, perhaps even le cancan. Alas, this ball was no different from respectable balls, except the ball managers were negro matrons.

White men and young women danced and exchanged pleasantries. The cushioned chairs on both sides of the balcony were reserved for the girls' watchful chaperones. The girls were light-skinned and well mannered.

The orchestra struck up "The Blue Danube," Mr. Strauss's popular new waltz.

"'Mamselle, si vous plais?”

The gentleman bowing to Scarlett was younger than she and prematurely bald. "English, please," she said.

On the dance floor, Scarlett was whirled back into her carefree girlhood.

Marriage could go hang, and Rhett Butler, too! She would enjoy herself tonight — if only her partner were a better dancer. He moved stiffly and was half a beat behind the measure, and he would keep apologizing! "Pardon, mamselle. You said English, did you not? I am so sorry!”

At last, the Blue Danube rolled to the sea; her partner bowed, wiped his forehead, and cleared his throat. With his eyes fixed somewhere over Scarlett's left shoulder, he enumerated assets: his new house on Canal Street, his half interest in a warehouse near the Morgan railroad depot, five percent of the Banque du New Orleans and 10 percent of a six-hundred-ton sidewheeler.

"And" — he blushed furiously — "I am faithful!”

"Sir? Why are you telling me this?”

"Mamselle. I am considering you. I hope you will do me the honor of considering me." He wiped his sweaty face. "Please to do me the honor of introducing me to your mother?”

"Sir, my mother is with the angels.”

"Your aunt, then, your cousin ...”

"I cannot think Aunt Eulalie would approve of you, sir.”

When the orchestra struck up again, Rhett swept her onto the floor.

Awkwardness was banished. The air seemed to shimmer.

"Mamselle," he said, "how well you dance.”

"As you, sir. Have you taken lessons?”

Rhett flashed a dazzling grin. "Forgive me if I interrupted delicate negotiations between you and that gentleman...”

"Sir?”

"I will top any offer he has made.”

"He owns ten percent of a steamboat, sir.”

"I own fifty percent of six steamboats.”

"The gentleman has five percent of a bank.”

"I own two banks outright and am partner in a third.”

"Ah, but sir. The young man says he is faithful.”

"You believe I am not?”

"Sir, you mustn't read my mind.”

Rhett whirled her. "In any marriage, at least one must be faithful. Are you faithful, madame?”

The mulatto woman in the brown dress interrupted their waltz. "Qui êtes-vous?"she snapped. "What is your name?”

Rhett answered for her. "Madame Gayerre, may I present my wife, Madame Butler.”

"This is a respectable ball," the furious woman said. "Not a farce.”

"We'll leave quietly, madame. There need be no scandal.”

She huffed but withdrew.

Rhett's authority was as delicious as it was hateful. At the door, Scarlett paused. "Which young girl was the 'business' you spoke about?”

Rhett nodded to a girl sitting alone — as proud and resigned as an Aztec sacrifice. "Madame Gayerre needed my advice about her niece Solange 's future.

I've known the Gayerres for years.”

From the balcony, the watchful young man raised a glass to Rhett and Scarlett.

"Ah," Rhett said, "so Tazewell was behind this nonsense.”

The Zouave doorman summoned them a cab.

Rhett set his hat on the seat. "Quadroon girls come to be attached to white gentlemen: aplacege. Their mothers negotiate the little house he must buy for her, the amount to be deposited in her account, the bonus for a child.

"Solange had two suitors, an elderly gentleman who is unlikely to make many demands and that fellow you were dancing with. I advised her to accept the elderly gentleman.”

"So the disappointed suitor was pursuing me.”

Rhett laughed, "My dear, you could do worse than ten percent of a steamboat.”

In their suite, the fully dressed Rhett Butler watched as Scarlett slowly removed her blue hat, her ball dress, her stockings, and her chemise. She loosed her hair.

"My God," Rhett said hoarsely.

Savoring her power, tingling from the top of her head to her toes, Scarlett did not remove her mask.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX A House for Monsieur Watling

Three days after he landed in New Orleans, Tazewell Watling was employed by the cotton factor, J. Nicolet et Fils. Nicolet's sixteen-year-old-son, François, had died of yellow fever, and Nicolet was moving his wife and daughters to Baton Rouge's healthier climate. When Taz arrived in the city, Nicolet's wife and daughters were already installed in their new home, but Nicolet himself hadn't left New Orleans.

J. Nicolet had long needed an assistant, and since he would now be in Baton Rouge much of the time, this need had become acute, but the prospect of hiring someone for the position his son would naturally have assumed had depressed him into immobility.

The morning Nicolet's belated advertisement finally appeared in the Picayune, Nicolet climbed the stairs to his dusty office over the Gravier Street warehouse. Tazewell Watling was waiting for him.

Tazewell held Nicolet's newspaper and beignet while Nicolet fumbled for his keys. Inside the office, Nicolet waved Taz to his visitor's chair and settled himself behind a desk whose surface was buried beneath cargo manifests, shipping news, and cotton reports.

"I am responding to your advertisement, monsieur," the young man said.

Nicolet had placed his advertisement hurriedly, so he couldn't change his mind. "I did not expect anyone so soon.”

"The Picayune can be got at its offices at six A.M.," the young man said.

I see.

"Is something wrong, monsieur?" the young man asked.

Nicolet blinked rapidly. Of course there was something wrong. This young man was not beloved François. He said, "No, nothing. As I intend to be out of the city often, I require a reliable assistant. Reliable!" Nicolet grumbled. "Most young men are not reliable; they loaf and smoke cigars, play cards!”

"I do not play cards, monsieur.”

"My business is not big enough to pay the excessive salary young men demand.”

"My requirements are modest.”

"Cotton factoring is a complex business that takes years to understand.”

"I make no promises I may not be able to keep, monsieur. I promise that I will try.”

Nicolet unfolded his newspaper and glanced at the dark lines of type without reading. He set his beignet on the newspaper. Every morning, he ate his beignet while reading the shipping news. "Diderot's Bakery makes the best beignets in the city.”

"Oui, monsieur. “

As they continued this disjointed interview, Nicolet was mollified by Taz's idiomatic Creole and Jesuit education. Like most Catholics, Nicolet overestimated the rigors and effect of Jesuit training. "Your family, young Watling? They live in New Orleans?”

"My parentage is ... irregular," Taz said.

"I see." Nicolet removed his glasses, breathed on them, and wiped them, with his handkerchief. New Orleans' commerce was intensely personal and he wanted a young man with connections. His François had had connections. The same week he fell ill, François had been invited to join Comus, the prestigious Mardi Gras society. Everyone had loved François.

Everyone!

"Monsieur, if I am distressing you ...”

Nicolet waved that away. The cotton factor was wise enough — and in enough pain — to know that he could not bear to interview a second young man, who would no more be François than this one. "Watling, you are not the first bastard I have known. Because of the good Jesuit fathers" — Nicolet managed a smile — "I will employ you. I can afford seven dollars a week.”

In the next hectic weeks, J. Nicolet taught Taz how to combine cotton shipments from the Creole planters into cargoes for the Liverpool commission men. Taz learned to distinguish between long and short staple, middling and lesser grades of cotton, and J. Nicolet showed him the tricks scoundrels used to pass off inferior, dirty, or ill-ginned cotton as better than it was.

Every morning, Taz was at J. Nicolet's office before his employer and he left after J. Nicolet quit for the day. In the warehouses and on the levees, he dogged J. Nicolet's heels with so many questions his amiable employer complained, "Ca qui prend zasocie prend make' (the man who hires an employee, takes a master). J. Nicolet wondered if, despite Taz's Jesuit education, the young man wasn't too American.

Taz had a room in a boardinghouse whose hallways reeked of lye soap and boiled cabbage.

When Taz finally wrote Belle, he exaggerated his prospects. About his escape from England, Taz wrote only, "Maman, it was time I made my own way in the world.”

Belle replied promptly:

Darling Boy,

I was so glad to get your letter! I was worried about you! I am happy you are in New Orleans with such a grand position.

The Chapeau Rouge is booming. Carpetbaggers and Yankee officers are rolling in money. Minette begs to be remembered to you. Taz, will you please send her three pounds of New Orleans coffee? My Darling Boy, how could you have thought Rhett Butler would marry a woman like your old Ma? Rhett has always loved Scarlett O'Hara. Rhett loved her when she was married to Frank Kennedy! I pray for Rhett's sake their marriage will be lucky.

Taz crumpled Belle's letter. How dare Rhett Butler not love his mother.

How dare he!

Jules Nore, who'd explained Taz's bastardy at the Jesuit School and had his nose bloodied for his trouble, was now employed by the Olympic Steamship Company. Jules and Taz resumed their acquaintance.

The two young men happened to be in the Boston Club when the honeymooning Butlers made their appearance.

A hush fell. All eyes turned to the couple.

Nobody else existed for these lovers. Complex intimacies and private jokes flashed in his knowing glance, her lowered eyelids, the quiver of her lip. These two were so beautiful, unfaithful husbands remembered how lovely their wives had once been and roués recalled their innocent first loves.

His father's bride was the loveliest woman Taz had ever seen, and he hated her. He hated her for being graceful; he hated Scarlett for not being Belle.

Did his father's bride know he had a son? Had Rhett Butler bothered to mention his bastard? Taz haunted them. He found reasons to while away hours in the St.

Louis Hotel and the Boston Club. Taz neglected his work, abbreviating the lengthy courtesies Creole planters were accustomed to.

Tazewell Watling didn't know what he was doing, or what he wanted.

Did he want Rhett to acknowledge him? Explain why he hadn't married Belle? Taz's mind swam with resentment.

And Rhett Butler strolled past with a nod and smile, as if he and Taz were distant acquaintances.

Although J. Nicolet had never done business with Captain Butler, he knew who he was. Everyone knew Captain Butler. "Butler is a serious man, young Watling. What is your interest in him?”

To Nicolet, Taz's vague reply was a confession of paternity. So J. Nicolet told him the stories about Captain Butler in Cuba and Central America.

"I don't doubt he wished to see Cubans freed from the Spanish tyrants but" — Nicolet snorted — "Butler wasn't indifferent to Spanish gold. Of course he was a young man then. No older than you are today.”

"Did he ... Was he married?”

Nicolet shrugged. "Butler kept a Creole girl. From the Gayerre family.

She was very beautiful.”

“Called ... Belle?”

"She was called Didi. While he was away, Didi died trying to lose Butler's baby. He hadn't known she was carrying his child. Butler was devastated.

During their mourning, Butler and the Gayerres grew close.”

"Even now," J. Nicolet said, "the Gayerres ask Butler to decide a delicate matter at the Quadroon Ball.”

Resentment is a dish of mixed flavors. Angry, ashamed, woozy with excitement and the anticipation of how Butler might react, Tazewell Watling escorted Mrs. Butler to the Quadroon Ball.

The next morning, J. Nicolet was in the office when Taz arrived.

When Taz said, "Good morning, sir," Nicolet didn't stop scribbling in his ledger.

"Sir ...”

J. Nicolet slammed the ledger shut. "You work hard and have learned my business. I planned to leave you in charge this summer. When I am in Baton Rouge, will you be arranging J. Nicolet's cotton shipments, or producing scandals?”

Tazewell Watling laid his order book on his employer's desk. "I was a fool, sir. I regret very much what I did last night and I have forfeited your confidence. My orders are complete as of yesterday." The young man put on his hat. "Sir, I am grateful for your many kindnesses.”

Doubt clouded J. Nicolet's face. "Merci pas coete arien. " (Thanks cost nothing.) Sir? "My family is content in Baton Rouge and I miss them very much.”

J. Nicolet waggled an admonitory finger. "Young Watling, without warning I will return from time to time to see if you are shipping cotton or making scandals. Because of my family I will give you this opportunity. One only!”

But J. Nicolet left New Orleans in June and didn't return until October.

New Orleans businessmen dreaded the word epidemic and deplored its appearance in the newspapers. On June 22, the Crescent reported that "yellow fever has become an obsolete idea in New Orleans." Although forty people died of yellow fever on July 4, the Picayune denied it was an epidemic.

Only after wealthy Toinette Sevier vomited blood and collapsed in the Boston Club was an epidemic admitted, and those who could flee the city began doing so.

By the end of July, the Charity Hospital, Maison de Sante, and the Turo Infirmary overflowed. Victims were tended in the orphanage, insane asylum, and public ballrooms. Funeral processions jammed the streets and coffins were stacked head-high in the cemeteries because there weren't enough workers to inter them.

New Orleans stank of death.

Born and raised in the city, Tazewell Watling had more resistance to the disease than the poor Irish immigrants, who died by the hundreds.

Although the larger cotton factors had closed and British cargo ships anchored well out in the channel lest they be forced into "yellow jack" quarantine when they arrived home, men had cotton to sell and there were small craft to take it to the ships.

Tazewell Watling made up cargoes from dawn until the sun sank over the river. He penned terse responses to J. Nicolet's lengthy, worried telegrams.

Nine hundred and sixty people died the first week of August.

Twelve hundred and eighty-eight the second week.

As the only functioning cotton buyer, young Watling might have taken advantage of sellers desperate for cash to get their families out of town. Taz paid the regular price with a shrug. "We must help one another in these hard times, eh, monsieur?”

When cooler weather arrived and the epidemic wound down, those who'd lived through it felt like veterans of a war. When the big cotton houses reopened, many who'd done business with Monsieur Watling during the epidemic continued doing business with him. J. Nicolet's profits swelled dramatically.

Tazewell Watling had earned an honest man's reputation in a dishonest age. Tazewell did business with Democrats and Republicans and kept his political opinions to himself. He enjoyed a wide circle of acquaintances.

Many New Orleanians had concluded that Captain Butler was Tazewell Watling's father, but since Taz didn't discuss his parentage, the topic wasn't raised in his hearing.

He became a man about town. Tazewell was quick to buy a round, and Jules Nore's joke was asking for a cigar and passing Taz's case until it was empty. Taz frequented sporting houses but had no favorite. Despite hints from several mamas, he never again attended a Quadroon Ball. When Tazewell's gambling friends asked for a loan to tide them over, Taz excused himself by saying he sent his money to his mother.

Three years after Taz started at the firm, J. Nicolet made him a partner.

"You will do all the work and I will receive half the profits, oui?”

Jules Nore was a lieutenant in the Mystick Krewe of Cornus, the oldest of the Mardi Gras parade societies. Jules invited Taz to join.

"But Jules," Taz said, "I'm a bastard." Jules was puzzled."What difference does that make?”

Four years after Tazewell Watling returned to New Orleans, he bought a stone house on Royal Street in the Vieux Carr?.

The evening he recorded his deed, Tazewell Watling returned to his unfurnished home and sat on the parlor floor, with the French doors open on his garden.

His L-shaped kitchen was awkward and his parlor was small, but there were two bedrooms on the second story — one with a separate entrance.

There were lime trees in his garden. There was a frangipani and a palm tree. The air was redolent with flowers.

Tazewell Watling sat listening to the faint clip-clop of horses on Royal Street. His moon rose over his lime trees.

The next morning, Tazewell Watling wrote, "Dear Maman, I hope you will consent to visit me in New Orleans. I have a grand surprise for you.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN A Silly Joke

One brisk Atlanta morning, outside the Farmer's and Merchants' Bank, Rhett passed an elderly couple selling apples from a farm wagon. The man called in a singsong, "Keepers, I got keepers. I got ciders, dessert apples'll melt in your mouth. I got your pie apples and cobblers. I got yellows and reds and stripes! Apples, I got your apples!”

The man's Confederate coat had been neatly patched; his wife's coat had been sewn from a blanket. It was impossible to guess their age. Her teeth were gone and his few were tobacco-stained. His hat, which might have once been a soldier's, was a color somewhere between brown and green. She knelt in the back of the wagon, sorting apples from one cask to another, setting each gently to avoid bruising them.

"Here, mister," the man cried. "Can you afford a penny for an apple? Take some home to the wife and young'uns.”

The woman looked at Rhett through clear blue eyes and said, "Jimmy, maybe the gentleman don't got nary wife nor young'uns. Maybe he got nobody to take an apple to.”

The man's face fell. "Nobody to take an apple to? Mercy! What a world we're a-livin' in, Sarie June. What a world!”

Laughing, Rhett bought a peck of Esopus Spitzenbergs because he liked the name.

As she slipped apples into a sack, the woman asked Rhett if he had children.

"Three.”

"How are they called?”

"Wade Hampton will be nine next month, Ella — let's see — she's four, and my Bonnie Blue is a year and eight months and four days.”

"She's yer favrit? You lit up when you thought on her.”

"She is my own. She is beautiful.”

"Sure she is." The woman reached into a smaller cask for three large yellow apples. "These Smokehouses are too sweet for grown-ups. But young'uns can't get enough of them." As she wrapped each separately in newspaper, she said, "This 'un is for Wade Hampton, this is for Ella, and I reckon this big one will suit your little Miss Bonnie Blue. No, no charge for the children.”

As she tied his sack with the children's apples on top, Rhett asked, "How long are you married?”

"How long's it been, Sarie June?" The man grinned. "Nigh on to forever.

He danced away from her swat.

The old man continued, "I reckon I can't remember a time when we wasn't married. Oh, it's been a sorrowful time. This woman has been a tribulation.”

This time, her swat connected and they laughed merrily at his wit and her vigorous response.

When he stopped chuckling, he added, "My Sarie could have had anyone she wanted. Oh, the boys were clusterin' around her like bees at a cider press. But Sarie chanced on me. Lovin's a chancy thing. You chance it every day.”

Rhett tied the sack behind the saddle, mounted his horse, and cantered down Mitchell Street. He and Scarlett lived in a showplace on Peachtree Street. They spent more for supper at the Kimball House than the old couple made in a week. Atlanta's important men, Governor Bullock himself, called on them.

But Rhett and Scarlett had never shared a silly joke. Never.

She had never said she loved him. Knowing what her answer would be, he never asked.

Sometimes, Rhett felt like a man falling from a precipice, powerless to direct his fall or undo the disaster. Although he and Scarlett hadn't been married three years, like the apple seller, Rhett couldn't remember a time when they weren't married. His and Scarlett's quarrels were more real than his memories of other women's embraces.

He loved her and couldn't leave her. Rhett's wife thought she loved Ashley Wilkes. Rhett bought her what she asked for. Her carriage was trimmed in cherry veneer. If she fancied a gown or a trinket, it was hers.

Sometimes he despised himself. Did he think he could buy her? Maybe after Scarlett was happy, after she finally owned everything she ever wanted, maybe then she would open her heart.

She loved her sawmills because she was a shrewd businesswoman. She loved her sawmills because she could be with her manager, Ashley Wilkes.

She was at the mill with Ashley today. When she came home, she'd have that faraway look in her eyes.

Sometimes, Rhett regretted not letting the Yankees hang the man.

The Butler home was dark and opulent, with carved wood paneling, heavy furniture, and floor-to-ceiling drapes. The gaslights were on.

He gave the sack to Mammy, explaining that the children were to have the wrapped apples when Bonnie rose from her nap.

"Mr. Rhett, these Smokehouses — childrens gonna love em." Mammy confided, "They so sweet, they make my teeth ache.”

He bounded up the stairs and turned into the nursery. He put his finger to his lips so the other children wouldn't wake Bonnie. Gently, he tugged her coverlet to her chin. Her eyelashes were gossamer, the tenderest things in the world. For some damn reason, a tear moistened his eye. Wade was tugging his sleeve as Ella silently urged him to sit down. When he did, she curled up on his lap. Why did children smell different than grown-ups? Wade was showing him something — a dark gray stone that turned wonderfully red when he licked it.

When she came in, Scarlett took everything in at a glance. She had that look in her eyes. "I want to talk to you." She marched into their bedroom.

Silently, Wade put his marvelous stone back into his pocket. As he dislodged Ella, Rhett ruffled her hair.

He closed her bedroom door behind him. "Rhett, I've decided that I don't want any more children. "I think three are enough.”

Lord, she was beautiful. Beautiful and blind. If Ashley Wilkes would have her, if she ever got her dream, she wouldn't want it. Only the unattainable would satisfy her.

"Three seems an adequate number," he said.

She flushed. "You know what I mean...”

Damn her for a fool! They could have been happy. No, something more than happy. Something ...

"I shall lock my door every night.”

"Why bother? If I wanted you, no lock would keep me out.”

He left her then and returned to the nursery, where Wade and Ella greeted him with smiles. Smiles.

In a bit, his darling Bonnie would wake and they would all go down to the kitchen and eat apples and perhaps enjoy a silly joke.

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT A White Robe

Rosemary Haynes Ravanel stood trembling on her front steps. Angry fingers tucked the butcher paper parcel, as if rewrapping could make things right. Excepting the tic at the corner of her mouth, Rosemary's face was impassive. Someone might be watching. Someone might have seen her open the parcel. That gentleman strolling down the sidewalk tipped his hat. That horseman rode past without a glance. That curtain on the second-story window across the street — did it flutter? Damn them! Oh damn them all to hell!

The parcel she carried into her home — into her home — contained three yards of cheap white cotton fabric, a red ribbon for the breast cross, and a crudely printed note: "Dear Missy, please make this into a robe and mask for the Ku Klux. Make it big!”

It was Christmas day. The holly Rosemary had strung in the hall was cheerful green and red. The juniper wreath on the drawing room door had a wonderful clean smell.

Inside her home!

Rosemary flung the parcel down. "How dare they!" she whispered. Her breath came as fast as a trapped sparrow's. How dare they!

When had Southern Honor died? At Pickett's charge, at Franklin? Had all the honorable men died? Rosemary thought she might be sick.

Southern Honor had come to this: a ruffian thinking to impress his comrades because his KKK robe, his murderer's garb, had been sewn by his commander's wife.

For that's how things were done these days, done so decent citizens could deny the terror that rode by night. "Oh no sir. I know nothing of the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, I sewed a robe similar to what you describe, but I don't know who provided the fabric nor who wore it. After I had sewn the robe, I left it on my doorstep, and it was gone by morning.

"I know nothing of murders, whippings, and beatings of negroes and white Republicans. You say negro women are raped? I know nothing of negro families hiding in the woods, or their shacks burned to the ground, of men and, yes, women dragged out of their homes, never to be seen again.

My husband? Andrew is often away. He is sometimes absent for weeks. But surely it is not a wife's place to question her husband's whereabouts. You say my husband is prominent in the Ku Klux Klan? Andrew has never spoken to me about any Ku Klux Klan.”

Charleston newspapers reported on the alleged Ku Klux Klan and chided Republicans for exaggerating its influence.

William Champion was paid a visit the other night by Certain Citizens who apparently objected to his inciting Negroes to Rebellion.

Mr. Champion will be seen no more in the Carolinas.

The body on the station platform was identified as that of Senator Arthur DeBose, the Radical Negro Legislator. Although passengers were waiting for the noon train, no one was able to identify DeBose's assailants, who rode away unhindered.

When Andrew was in the Low Country, he usually stayed at Congress Haynes's old fishing camp. Sometimes, Rosemary only learned he'd been there after he'd gone again.

Occasionally, very early, she'd be startled awake by Andrew's footsteps passing her bedroom door.

Andrew was so gaunt, he seemed to have grown taller. His wrists were taut as braided rope. When Rosemary spoke to her husband, he flinched, as if surprised at her temerity. He answered her anxious questions about Haynes & Son as if that firm were owned by strangers.

One November morning, when Rosemary came downstairs, she'd found her husband's riding boots beside the bootjack, where he'd left them last night. The uppers were flecked with dark blood, the toes crusted with clotted gore. At arm's length, Rosemary had carried them upstairs and set them outside her husband's bedroom door.

Most of what Rosemary knew about her husband's activities, she learned at the Charleston market.

"I understand your husband has been in York County, Mrs. Ravanel.

Please tell the Colonel every decent white woman thanks him!”

"Mrs. Ravanel, my up-country cousin is deathly afraid the niggers are going to murder her in her bed. Mrs. Joseph Randolph of Centreville.

Please mention Mrs. Randolph to your husband.”

"I saw your husband with Archie Flytte and Josie Watling on the River Road yesterday. I declare they had a stern look about them.”

Negro fish and produce mongers Rosemary had known all her life wouldn't meet her eye.

When Andrew tried again to recruit Jamie Fisher, Jamie had replied to his former Colonel, "I have followed you to the gates of hell, but I will not follow you into the Klan.”

Andrew had accused Jamie of being a money-grubbing innkeeper.

"Really, Rosemary," Jamie told her later, "I couldn't think what to say.

So, I tried to make a joke. I told Andrew the only men who could wear dresses without blushing were Scotsmen and priests. I thought Andrew was going to knock me down.”

Now, Rosemary went to the kitchen to boil water for oatmeal. When it was ready, she set it on a silver tray to carry upstairs. Her son Louis Valentine's little bed was in his grandmother's bedroom. Sometimes, Elizabeth Butler cared for the boy, sometimes the boy cared for his Nana; they were playmates.

The child's sweet temper was hitched to a precocious adult knowingness.

He'd sit and listen to Nana's Jesus stories all day, but when she turned to the harsh Old Testament prophets, Louis Valentine's little face would darken. He said, "I hate it when God is mean!”

In the bleak aftermath of the War, when Rosemary and Andrew married, Andrew Ravanel had wanted a son, and their lovemaking had been urgent, if not tender. After Louis Valentine was born, Andrew lost interest, as if a live birth were everything he required.

Andrew never asked after Louis Valentine. He seemed to have forgotten he had a son.

As Rosemary set the tray down, Elizabeth Butler was tasking her grandson to name the wise men.

"Melchior," Valentine said confidently. "Bal..." He shook his head, disgusted with his failure.

"Balthazar?" Elizabeth prompted.

"Yes, Nana. And Caspar, too!" Valentine ran to kiss his mother. "Good morning, Mama. Mama? Mama, are you sad?”

"It's all right, dear. Mama's sad this morning. Not sad about you. I couldn't be sad about you!”

Elizabeth said, "The wise men came from the East!" She confided, "Isaiah Watling believes they were Chinamen!”

Louis Valentine considered this theory gravely. "Chinamen are on the bottom of the world?”

"Yes, dear.”

"Why don't they fall off?”

"Because God loves them, dear. God loves all his children.”

Rosemary set two places at the table and bowed her head while Louis Valentine said grace. She took their chamber pot downstairs to the necessary, emptied and washed it.

Afterward, she carried her own tepid, half-solidified oatmeal into the family room, where, in the silver chest, she kept Melanie Wilkes's precious letters. Without those letters, Rosemary thought she would go mad.

Dearest Rosemary,

Please forgive my bleak indiscretions. I hope you understand that I confide to you what I cannot confide to another. If I didn't have you to unburden myself to, I don't know what I would do. Should I set dissembling aside and shout the truth? My beloved husband Ashley, has always been attracted to my dearest friend Scarlett. I had hoped that your brother would cure Scarlett of this infatuation, but she — the friend I love more than any on earth — yearns after my husband so openly, sometimes I must needs look away. Sometimes, when Scarlett is wearing that particular dreamy expression, I ask, "Dear Scarlett, what are you thinking?" She'll answer that she's thinking about the garden, the children, politics, or some other matter that never crosses her unhorticultural, unmotherly, unpolitical mind. I pretend to believe her because, dear Rosemary, I must pretend.

We are, all of us, imprisoned by Love.

When I was a girl, I thought Love attended one like a floral perfume.

Now I think Love is more like a drunkard's craving for wine. The drunkard knows his desire destroys everything precious to him. He knows he will despise himself tomorrow, and yet he cannot forswear wine!

Dear Rosemary, Scarlett thinks it is merely ill fortune she and my husband are so rarely alone. I confess my design: I would as soon leave those two together as a drunkard with a case of brandy!

Whenever Scarlett visits Ashley's mill, that evening my husband comes home to me a different man. Even as he kisses me glad hello, poor Ashley's troubled eyes shout that he'd rather be with another.

Your brother is trying to persuade Scarlett to sell her sawmills to Ashley, so they'll have no excuse to be together!

I dare not conceive again. Dr. Meade has uttered the direst warnings.

Consequently, Ashley and I cannot enjoy those intimate relations which bond a husband and wife. I miss Ashley so!

Since Rhett and Scarlett's happiness is so interwoven with my own, I wish I could write that their marriage was happy. Rhett is not unfaithful, nor is Scarlett, but they are as discontented as two philanderers. When differences arise, they are not resolved; misunderstandings are taken to heart; each one's privacies make no space for the other; and last month, Mammy, Scarlett's dear old nurse, confided (in her usual oblique fashion) that they no longer share a bed.

Scarlett has so identified herself with Atlanta's Carpetbaggers that respectable people snub her on the street. As if to goad Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing Scarlett routinely entertains Governor Bullock and his cronies — Puryear, Kimball, and Blodgett. Rhett avoids these gatherings like the plague.

Oh Rosemary, Rhett and Scarlett are so dear to my heart! If your brother hadn't been driving that dreadful night we fled Atlanta ... and afterward, when hard times stalked the land, if Scarlett had not been Mistress at Tara, I don't believe my son, Beau, or myself would have survived.

Scarlett and Rhett are not like you and me. Heads turn when they walk into a room. They expect duller folks' deference.

When the Queen of Sheba came to Solomon's court, she brought a powerful retinue: soldiers, viziers, and serving maids. Her horses were caparisoned with gold and precious rubies. At Jerusalem's gates, Solomon's guards stood aside to let them pass.

The Queen had come to Solomon to ask questions she had considered all her life, questions her most learned advisers could not answer.

I don't imagine she went to him that first day, nor even the second. Minor officials would scurry back and forth; perhaps there was a welcome feast, with Solomon at the head of an enormous table and Sheba at the foot.

But soon, for she was a mighty Queen, she would have had her audience.

Solomon was robed as richly as she. He was handsome. He had a hundred concubines, many of them younger and lovelier than she.

When Sheba asked him a question, Solomon answered it. When she asked another, he answered that, too. He answered all her questions.

The Bible says, "The spirit went out of her. " What use was her power and wealth when he could answer any question she put to him? How she must have hated him.

Rhett and Scarlett's link, the only thing they agree on, is their daughter, Bonnie, whom they love to distraction. I'm afraid Rhett spoils Bonnie. He takes her with him everywhere. She's such a charming creature!

Little Bonnie has accomplished a miracle. She has made Rhett Butler — promise you won't laugh — respectable!

When Rhett learned the Butler children weren't being invited to children's parties because society disapproved of their parents, he mended fences.

When he has a mind to, your brother can charm the pelt off a grizzly bear!

Did the Confederate Orphans and Widows need help? "Will a hundred be enough?”

Prominent Confederate officers — General Forrest in person! — trooped through Atlanta to establish Rhett's Confederate credentials. He has distanced himself Jrom the Carpetbaggers, even Rufus Bullock, his old friend.

The same ladies who cut your brother dead six months ago fawn over him, and Wade, Ella, and little Bonnie Blue attend every children's soiree!

I pray that Rhett and Scarlett may yet be happy. I pray that A Little Child Shall Lead Them ...

As I pray for you and little Louis Valentine.

Your friend Melly

That afternoon, Rosemary shepherded her mother and son from AG Church Street to the East Bay Inn.

Federal warships were still anchored in Charleston harbor and there were more blue-clad sailors than civilians on the promenade.

Coastal shipping was brisk and Haynes & Sons' deserted wharf was a bleak exception to the prosperous maritime scene.

EAST BAY INN JAMIE FISHER, MISS JULIET RAVANEL, SOLE PROPS.

The modest black-on-green sign might easily be overlooked by the hasty or vulgar traveler. The inn itself looked as if dirt entered at its peril.

The door brass of the old Fisher town house was polished mirrorbright.

The front hall was Christmassy with wreaths and holly. A sprig of mistletoe hung above the drawing room door.

"Dear Rosemary!" Juliet wiped her hands on a towel.

"Juliet, it is so good to see you. We've been too much strangers.”

Juliet had aged into a ramrod-straight woman whose gray-flecked hair was contained in a tight bun. Her skillfully made dress was too youthful for her.

"Happy Christmas, Juliet," Rosemary said, kissing her cheek. "Our estrangement is not my desire.”

Juliet's polite smile warmed a degree. "My brother is a reckless fool.

May I take your coat? Oh, here's Louis Valentine. Louis Valentine, you are so grown up.”

Grown up or no, Louis Valentine tucked himself behind his grandmother's knee.

"Mrs. Butler, Merry Christmas. So good of you to come. Louis Valentine, there are children in the drawing room and the prettiest Christmas tree! Captain Jackson's daughter is June. Sally is the blond girl.”

At this, Valentine shed all caution and marched into the other room, from whence a little girl cried, "Mustn't touch the tree! Miss Juliet says we mustn't touch the tree!”

Rosemary and Juliet lingered in the hall while Elizabeth Butler followed her grandson.

"Rhett's upstairs. His Bonnie and your Louis Valentine make our Christmas complete.”

The inn's paneling gleamed. The hall chandelier glittered like icicles.

"What a magnificent piece, Juliet. What a miracle it survived the shelling.”

"Don't be a ninny. When it came trundling down the street on a scavenger's cart, we bought it for five dollars. I live in fear that one day someone will ask, 'Where on earth did you find So-and-so's chandelier? Jamie washes it. It has one thousand and six crystals, and he never puts them back as they were.”

"I was practically raised in this house," Rosemary said. "Grand, difficult Grandmother Fisher. Poor dear Charlotte ...”

"I regret every unkind word I ever said to her.”

"In the end, Charlotte loved you." Rosemary inspected a framed print.

"Isn't this a blockade runner? Isn't it the Bat ? And you with a houseful of Yankees? Juliet, what a subversive creature you are!”

Louis Valentine's squeal drew his mother's attention.

Some of the drawing room furniture was neatly repaired, but the love seat and two chairs wanted reupholstering. Elizabeth Butler and her grandson stood hand in hand before an ornament-bedecked Christmas tree.

When Louis Valentine reached for the candles, a girl warned him, "You'll burn yourself! Silly boy.”

Juliet introduced Rosemary to the Yankee mothers, Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Caldwell.

In this room, little Rosemary Butler and little Charlotte Fisher had tiptoed around Grandmother Fisher's precious Chippendale furniture! Rosemary shook her head to clear the cobwebs. Louis Valentine left his grandmother to help the girls build a fortress of brightly colored wooden blocks. He announced, "It's Fort Sumter.”

"It is not," a Yankee girl demurred. "For if it is Fort Sumter, we shall have to knock it down.”

"Jesus Christ is returning," Mrs. Butler informed the mothers. "I expect Him any day.”

Rosemary felt her brother's familiar hand on her shoulder. "Rosemary, Mother, say hello to my beautiful Bonnie Blue.”

The toddler had Scarlett's dark hair and her father's captivating smile.

Her blue velvet dress matched her hair bow. "Daddy says you 'good Butler.' Who the bad Butlers?”

"Bad Butlers?" Elizabeth frowned. "Why, there are no bad Butlers.”

Rosemary laughed, "Your father flatters me, honey. Do you want to play with your cousin Louis Valentine?”

"Please." A child's clumsy curtsy.

Bonnie flopped down with the other children and began removing blocks from the fortress they were erecting.

Rhett watched her lovingly. He asked his sister, "Would you take some Christmas cheer? They've turned Grandmother Fisher's withdrawing room into a bar.”

Two Yankee officers had the morris chairs in the bow window. The Butlers shared a couch before the crackling fire. Jamie Fisher bustled in. "Rhett, I was at the market when you checked in. Happy Christmas! Happy Christmas, Rosemary.”

"You've done great things here, Jamie.”

"We're planning to serve meals. Our dining room is enormous, and Lord knows, Charleston has enough unemployed cooks.”

How odd, Rosemary thought, that after what he'd been through, Jamie Fisher was still an innocent. His sister, Charlotte, had been an innocent, too. Who could think them worse off? Jamie said, "Will you try our eggnog? I made it myself.”

After pouring tall mugs of his foamy concoction, Jamie excused himself.

One of the Yankee mothers appeared. "Madam, if I may intrude...

Your companion ... the old woman ...”

"Our mother. Yes?”

"Doubtless the Book of Revelations is a commendable text, but...”

The woman sighed, a noble sufferer.

"Madam," Rhett intoned, "Revelations is a sacred book. Many sinners have been saved from perdition thereby.”

"Your mother ...”

Rosemary smiled reassuringly. "Can be overwhelming, I know. Why don't you leave her with the children. Adults find Mother ... difficult, but children see straight to her heart.”

The woman snapped, "In Connecticut, madam, we don't nursemaid our children with the Book of Revelations." She marched out, and Rosemary heard the woman's daughter wail, "Mama, I was having fun!”

Rhett shook his head, "Poor Mother.”

"She's happy, Rhett. Perhaps there's more to life than happiness, but at Mother's age, there can't be much more.”

A log toppled in the fire and sparks rushed up the chimney.

"Perhaps," Rhett said. "Do you remember the first time I came here?”

"I'll never forget. How old was I, six or seven?" Rosemary took her brother's hand. "Do you still love me, brother?”

"As my life.”

The Yankee officers finished their drinks and left. Rhett was grave. "My Washington friends say President Grant has lost patience with the Klan. Rosemary, Andrew's activities are too well known.”

"Andrew and I don't talk about that." She set her mug down. "We do not talk at all.”

"Please warn your husband. The Yankees want to hang somebody.”

"Andrew won't listen to me, Rhett. I doubt he hears me." She rubbed her hands. "I do not know what Andrew hears these days.”

Across the hall, the children's noises were happy. "And your Scarlett? How is Scarlett?”

"My wife is in good health.”

"And ...”

"I'm afraid there is no 'and.' " When Rhett drank, eggnog frosted his mustache. For a moment, Rosemary's strong brother seemed a clown with dark, sad eyes. "She was everything I ever wanted. She is everything I want.

Scarlett..." He wiped the foam with his handkerchief. "Funny how things turn out, isn't it?" He set his glass aside. "I've brought a rocking horse for Louis Valentine.”

"He'll be delighted." Rosemary considered for a moment before saying, "Haynes and Son ...”

"Is bankrupt. I know." He took her hand. "Andrew has squandered John Haynes's legacy on the Klan. You're lucky the house is in your name.

You mustn't worry, Rosemary. I'll always take care of you, Louis Valentine, and Mother.”

When Rosemary leaned back, the fire warmed her cheeks. She felt so tired. She might close her eyes and doze.

Her brother was talking about money. Rosemary didn't want to think about money. She opened her eyes and said, "Thank you for caring, dear brother, but some things I must do for myself.”

Jt rained that night — an icy winter rain. When Rosemary heard Andrew at the door, she set down her mending basket and went into the front hall. Andrew stared at his wife. "Rosemary.”

“Good evening, husband," Rosemary said calmly. "Where have you been?”

Andrew shut the door and shrugged out of his slicker. His shirt was soaked. "You don't want to know.”

"Yes, husband, I do want to know.”

He cocked his head as a man who spies a curiosity: a cat that dances, a dog reputed to speak.

"Business," Andrew said.

"What business do you have, husband? The bank is foreclosing on Haynes and Son.”

He dismissed that enterprise with an angry head shake. "Don't you know, wife, that the South Carolina legislature is a snake pit of Scalawags, Carpetbaggers, and niggers. They are not our government!”

"Are you our government, husband? Doing under cover of darkness what honest men will not do in daylight?”

She gasped when he gripped her arm, "Which 'honest men'?" His voice frightened her. Her husband had used that voice beside fires where terrified men waited to be murdered. That voice had destroyed women's hopes and mocked children's pleas. "Andrew," Rosemary whispered, "where have you goner "Wife, I haven't changed. Others may have changed, but I have not.”

"Andrew, you're hurting me!”

As suddenly as he'd grabbed her, he let go. Rubbing her arm, she picked up the parcel from the hall table and thrust it at him. "This came this morning, husband. There's a note.”

He glanced at the note. "Patriotic Southern women make our robes.

What of it?”

"Patriotic?”

He said, "If we don't protect our women, who will?”

Rosemary frowned. "How do you protect us, Andrew? From what threat do you protect us?”

"Fellow wanted to boast about his 'special-made' robe." Andrew's laugh was three sharp barks. "Do you imagine I enjoy doing these things? Wife, do you think me heartless? Rosemary, I am doing my duty.”

Though Andrew went on about corrupt Carpetbaggers, Southern rights, and insolent niggers, Rosemary didn't listen. She was tired of him.

When Andrew wound down, Rosemary said, "Andrew, I don't want you here.”

Her husband paled. His eyes roamed. He licked his lips. Rosemary could smell the stench of Andrew's body and the corruption of his breath.

She said, "You can't ever come home again.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Natural Wonders

On a drizzly March morning, Scarlett O'Hara Butler dressed for Governor Bullock's celebration.

Mammy said, "Honey, only actresses bare their chests, and you ain't no actress. That gown ain't hidin' half what it s'posed to!”

"In Paris, it is the height of fashion.”

"'Lanta ain't Paris nor anywhere's else, neither. You is a married woman!”

Married — how Scarlett loathed the word. Married meant Don't ana forbidden*.

After she married Rhett, Scarlett gave her mourning clothes to the Confederate Widows and Orphans. She wished she could give her marriage to the widows and orphans too!

Between married and mother, Scarlett felt like a mule dragging logs through the tuckerbrush.

Rhett loved children — provided Prissy changed them and Scarlett nursed them and bore them in pain and sweat and blood. Why shouldn't Rhett love them? Scarlett chose her memories as if picking scenes for the parlor stereograph.

Tara was Gerald O'Hara's laughter and Ellen O'Hara's caring hands. Twelve Oaks was brilliant parties, doting admirers, helpful darkies, and Ashley Wilkes — her Ashley.

Scarlett never recalled her mother's self-martyrdom, her father Gerald's drunken blather, or Ashley's discomfort with the role he been cast in at birth.

D O N A Ln Mc C A IG In New Orleans, Toinette Sevier had hinted to Scarlett about Ellen's doomed love for Philippe Robillard. How like her love for Ashley! Scarlett never wondered if Ellen's love for Philippe was a sorrow at the heart of her parents' marriage.

Scarlett O'Hara Butler's sixteen-inch waist was no more and her flashing eyes had seen too much of life, but she could still turn men's heads.

Mammy tugged at her neckline. "Child, you're bound for mischief. Associatin' with Carpetbaggers and Scalawags. Think what your Mama would say!

Trust Mammy to put a chill on things.

When she informed him he was a hypocrite, Rhett didn't deny it. The new Rhett Butler reveled in hypocrisy!

In public, Rhett never smiled when he ought to frown. He no longer confused simple souls or confounded cleverer ones. Whatever absurd notion Mrs. Meade or Mrs. Elsing advanced, Rhett solemnly agreed with it.

Had one of the grande dames opined the moon was made of blue cheese, Rhett Butler would have wondered aloud if it just might be Stilton.

Sunday mornings found Rhett, Ella, Wade, and Bonnie settled in their pew at St. Philip's. Mr. Rhett Butler even had a desk at the Farmer's and Merchants' Bank.

Why was Rhett able to do anything he wished to do? A woman mustn't do this; a woman mustn't do that. Run her own business? Scarlett might as well have stripped off her clothes and ridden naked down Peachtree Street!

Lord, how she missed her sawmills. Somehow — afterward she was never quite sure how — Rhett had tricked her into selling them. He'd confused her and made her so angry, she'd sold her sawmills to Ashley.

Scarlett felt like she'd sold part of herself. Her sawmills were sound, profitable businesses, and if she'd wanted to sell, Lord knows, she'd had plenty of offers. She'd built them by herself! They were tangible evidence of who she was and what she could do.

She couldn't drive past them anymore without wanting to weep.

On this rainy Saturday, Rhett was in the library reading the newspaper while Wade, Ella, and Bonnie sat on the rug, playing a game that involved lining up the household spoons in ranks at their father's feet.

Without preamble, Scarlett said, "Children, please play somewhere else. Your father and I need to talk.”

Wade and Ella obeyed, but Bonnie climbed onto her father's lap, stuck her thumb in her mouth, and examined her mother with her wide blue eyes.

"Bonnie should stay, dear wife. One day, Bonnie will marry. By observing our affectionate interchanges, Bonnie learns what she can expect from her own marriage.”

"Certainly, dear husband. Bonnie should know everything there is to know about marriage. Has our daughter visited the Chapeau Rouge?”

Rhett grinned. "Ah, you still have ammunition in your pouch and do not hesitate to fire it. Scarlett, have I told you lately how much I admire you?”

Her face softened. "Why, no...”

"My dear, I applaud you for being the most resolutely selfish woman I've ever met.”

"Thank you, husband," Scarlett said, "for your candor.”

Rhett sighed. "Bonnie, I'm afraid your Mama is right; you're too young for your parents' marriage. I don't know when you'll be old enough. I'm not sure I'm old enough.”

With love in his eyes, Rhett watched the child scamper from the room, Scarlett felt a jealous flash and then confusion. How could she be jealous of her own child? "So you're off to celebrate the Pennsylvania Railroad's capture of the Georgia Railroad. Why not celebrate with a masked ball? Aren't masks traditional in bandit society?”

"Aren't you the one to talk! Wasn't Rufus Bullock your friend?”

Rhett shrugged. "Rufus and I have done business from time to time.”

"Now that it suits Captain Butler to be oh so respectable, his old friends fall by the wayside?”

He folded his newspaper. "Am I to have a sermon on loyalty from Miss Scarlett? Please continue.”

Scarlett flushed. Why had she ever married this hateful man? Rhett tapped his newspaper. "Better hurry, dear. If you hesitate, Rufus might not be Governor. His powerful friends are jumping ship and he's lost control of the legislature. Rufus's wife took their children north so they won't be insulted on the streets her husband governs. Edgar Puryear is Rufus's only friend. Poor Rufus.”

Rhett opened the heavy drapes to watch his wife's carriage make the turn onto Peachtree Street.

. When Prissy came in to say she was taking the children to play at the Wilkeses', Rhett waved an indifferent hand. The house — her house — was so big, he didn't hear them go.This miserable day mocked spring's promises.

Pale yellow forsythia bent beneath raindrops and the lilacs were blue with cold.

How had he come to this? Blinded by love. All his experience, his travels, the women he'd known — nothing had assuaged his insane yearning for the woman he married, whose heart he could not win.

For her and her children, he'd become respectable — a respectable hypocrite: "Neither hanged nor a hangman be." If Atlanta's leaders decided to raid Shantytown again, Rhett Butler would ride with them.

He'd do anything for her, he'd give her anything...

His wife thought she loved another man, but he knew better. Her love was dreaming for a way of life she'd envied and never understood as a child. Daughter of an Irish immigrant who'd married above himself: poor covetous Scarlett.

She'd burn through Ashley Wilkes in six months. He was far too gentle a flower.

Rain slid down the windowpane. Rain dripped from the lead mullions.

Rhett Butler snorted, laughed at himself, and went to the fireplace to stir the fire.

He heard her carriage on the cobblestones. When she came into the parlor, he lowered his book. "You're home early.”

She made a face and went to the cabinet for a brandy. She downed it with a shudder.

Rhett closed his book and laid it on the end table. "Bulwer-Lytton's new Utopia. He imagines we can all be happy and good.”

"We can't?”

"Perhaps if, like the creatures Bulwer-Lytton imagines, we live in a cave at the center of the earth. On earth's surface, goodness and happiness are in short supply.”

"Rhett, why did you make me sell my mills?”

He got up to pour his own drink. "You know perfectly well why I helped you sell your mills. So you wouldn't be closeted with the little gentleman every day.”

"You resent Ashley Wilkes because he is so fine.”

"I pity Wilkes because he is too fine." He set down his glass. "Scarlett, need we do this?”

She searched his face and sighed. "We do have a talent for discord." Her smile was almost friendly. "You were right, Rhett. As usual. Governor Bullock is finished and his celebratory luncheon was a tedious sham. The Pennsylvania Railroad people were disappointed you didn't come.”

"There is a limit even to my hypocrisy.”

"And that is?”

Rhett chuckled.

"Your friend Captain Jaffery has been assigned to Custer's regiment.”

"The Seventh's in Carolina locking up Klansmen.”

"Jaffery hopes they'll go back out west. On ..." She paused for effect.

"The Northern Pacific.”

"I trust you've not put money in that folly.”

"Jay Cooke is the cleverest man alive and his Northern Pacific will be a bigger success than the Union Pacific. Everybody says so.”

"Will it?”

She arched her eyebrows. "I suppose you've heard about the Natural Wonders?”

He stepped nearer and frowned. He asked, "How much have you had to drink?”

Defiantly, she poured herself another and smiled over the rim of the glass. "Near the Yellowstone River on the Northern Pacific route, there's an amazing realm of therapeutic hot springs and spectacular geysers.”

"Geysers? Scarlett...”

"Geysers spout hot water, a hundred feet high, as regularly as clocks chime the hours. Don't give me that look, Rhett. Jay Cooke — “

"Hot water? Spouting? Why do you want to be rich, darling? You already have me.”

She smiled confidently, "Why yes, I do.”

When he touched her arm, the warmed silk of her dress thrilled his fingertips.

Speaking very quickly, Scarlett added, "Jay Cooke had Congress name this region Yellowstone National Park. The Northern Pacific's cars will be filled with tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park. Wouldn't you?”

"Excuse me. Wouldn't I what?”

"Wouldn't you like to see steaming water erupting as regular as clockwork?”

Close to her, he inhaled the scent of her hair and murmured, "Doubtless the Sioux will welcome these tourists with open arms.”

She backed away. Nervously, she patted her hair. "Tourists will take the train to see mineral pools and geysers! They will go to see the Natural Wonders!”

His grin was amused. "Scarlett, you are a Natural Wonder.”

Her eyes softened. Her lower lip trembled. Then he saw a flare deep in her eyes. Fear? Was that fear? What was she afraid of? She turned for the door.

"I never said I loved you, you know," she said, as if she weren't quite sure.

The air in the small space between them hummed.

More firmly she said, "I don't, you know.”

His muscles ached from holding still, from not reaching out and taking her. In a husky voice, he managed to say, "I admire your candor." Because his hands ached to touch her, to ravish her, to close around her throat and murder her, Rhett Butler bowed stiffly, brushed past his wife, and walked out of the house onto Peachtree Street, hatless in the cold rain.

CHAPTER FORTY A Murderer's Son

In November, President Ulysses S. Grant declared South Carolina in rebellion, suspended habeas corpus, and sent the Seventh Cavalry to smash the Klan. Former Confederate generals Gordon and Forrest were summoned before the United States Congress, where they reluctantly admitted they might have known people who might have been associated with the "so-called" Ku Klux Klan but they personally had had nothing to do with it.

A fortnight after Andrew Ravanel was arrested, Elizabeth Kershaw Butler sat bolt upright in her bed and emitted a faint unearthly cry, which woke her daughter dozing in the armchair at her side. When Rosemary held a mirror to her mother's mouth, the glass didn't fog.

Rosemary's son, Louis Valentine, was a sound sleeper and merely murmured when she carried him to her own bedroom and placed him in her bed. Rosemary went to the kitchen and made herself a pot of tea. She didn't weep for what she had lost. She wept for what her mother had never had.

It was early — before dawn. Though she had expected this death for some time, it still took her by surprise.

Later that day, Rosemary wrote her friend.

Dearest Melanie,

My mother, Elizabeth Butler, went to her Heavenly Reward early this morning. Mother did not suffer at the end.

As you must have heard, Andrew Ravanel has been arrested for his Klan activities. Last Saturday, I brought his clothing to a camp outside Columbia.

The camp is run by Federal cavalry, and whether for his previous rank or because they secretly share his views, Andrew has his own tent in that overcrowded pigsty. I had not dreamed there were so many Klansmen!

Andrew says once the special courts are ready, he will be tried for several negro murders.

There. I have said it. My words change nothing Andrew has done, nor my confusion and heartbreak. Violence and bitterness sully the innocent with the guilty! Will my sweet Louis Valentine grow up as the son of a convicted murderer? Rhett warned Andrew things would come to this, but Andrew was too proud to listen.

Louis Valentine knows something bad has happened to his father. I haven't found the words to explain.

My father once said there was bad blood in the Butlers, a Butler curse.

I believe the curse was lovelessness.

I married my husband John to escape my fathers tyranny and I devalued Johns simple goodness until it was too late. Goodness works slowly, dear Melanie, and adds to our store in tiny increments. As a girl, I was enchanted by Andrew — the bravest rider, best dancer, the boldest fighter, the man who could commit himself utterly to whatever he did! Did I hope his desperate courage would rub off on me? Whether the penitentiary or defeat destroyed him, I cannot say. But gallant Andrew has transformed himself into a terrifying grotesque.

What will I do now, dearest Melanie? Unlike Scarlett, I have neither the inclination nor ability for business.

I was reared to bear babies, love a man, and keep a home. I seem to have inherited my mothers reclusive nature and don't leave 46 Church Street for days at a time.

My brother Julian was ejected from the legislature with the Carpetbaggers he'd attached himself to. He has found work as a clerk.

Ladies I worked with at the Free Market have started a school for girls: the Charleston Female Seminary. They have invited me to teach. I can speak a little French and am exquisitely sensitive to proprieties (if only from flaunting them). I suppose I would be a good-enough teacher.

I will bury my mother, and when Rhett comes, I will not — I Will Not — ask him what to do!

I have married one good man and one rakehell. I do not think I will marry again, but if I did I'd want someone who needed me.

I thank God for our friendship.

Always your, Rosemary

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE The Bottle Trees

Andrew Ravanel thought he'd seen the bearded nigger before. He'd been sold at John Huger's sale, the sale where Andrew tried to buy Cassius. Wasn't he a wheelwright? A carpenter? The bearded nigger said, "Guilty.”

The tall nigger said, "Guilty.”

The nigger in the yellow vest said, "Guilty.”

The bald nigger said, "Guilty.”

Andrew scratched the back of his neck. It was hot for so early in the year. So many people crammed into the Charleston courtroom, it was bound to be hot.

The scrawny nigger said, "Guilty." There wasn't any meat on that boy.

He wouldn't make a half-task hand.

The four-eyed nigger said, "Guilty." What did a nigger need glasses for? They couldn't read. It was ironic: twelve niggers pronouncing judgment on a Colonel of the Confederate States of America. The wizened nigger said, "Guilty." Why did some of them shrivel up like dried-apple dolls? "Guilty." Lord, that nigger was fat. How could anybody say they hadn't been treated right? If this nigger'd been a hog, he'd have been ripe for slaughter. Get some real hams off that boy.

"Guilty.”

"Guilty.”

Andrew turned to nod at a couple of good old boys, who pretended they didn't know him.

"Guilty.”

Six months ago, you bet they would have known him. Andrew caught Rosemary's eye. She looked as fresh as if she'd just stepped out of the bath.

"Guilty.”

Guilty of what? Guilty of resisting the oppressor's government? The Federal judge rapped his gavel. "Mr. Ravanel. The jury has found you guilty of four counts of intentional manslaughter. Do you have anything to say to this court?”

They called Judge Boyd "Pit Bull" Boyd. He surely looked like one.

"Colonel Ravanel, Your Honor," Andrew said.

"Colonel Ravanel. This court is willing to entertain evidence of your repentance, some acknowledgment of your terrible deeds, before passing sentence. As your attorney will warn you, Colonel Ravanel, without repentance, it will go hard on you. Sentencing hearing will be in this courtroom tomorrow, ten o'clock. Do I have your word of honor as a gentleman you won't run?”

Andrew smiled, thinking, My word of honor, Pit Bull? But before he could speak, Andrew's lawyer, William Ellsworth, popped up. "You have my word, Judge Boyd. My client will be here.”

"Then, Andrew Ravanel, you will remain free on bond to prepare an entreaty that will move our hearts. Tomorrow at ten." The judge's gavel fell.

Being convicted felt no different than unconvicted. He was no better or worse.

When Ellsworth tried to precede him, Andrew pushed ahead through a throng of glaring negroes, and whites' sly winks.

Rosemary was in the lobby, where Custer's soldiers kept the crowd at bay. "Andrew, I'm sorry.”

Why was Rosemary sorry? No jury of black apes had convicted her of anything. She hadn't been insulted by a Yankee judge in front of all Charleston.

"Can I come home?" Andrew said.

Rosemary frowned. "No," she said.

Before the War, this courthouse lobby would have been scrubbed every day. Before the War, Low Country planters came here to settle boundary disputes and contracts. Andrew's shoulders drooped. He'd been fighting so long, so very long. There was nothing left. "Give my best to the boy.”

lo your son.

"Yes, to Valentine.”

Andrew's lawyer hustled him out a side door into a closed carriage.

Ellsworth lit his pipe. It took him three tries to get it going. "You hadn't a chance," he said.

"Oh, I don't know," Andrew said lightly. "I was hoping some jurors remembered me from before the War.”

The lawyer puffed furiously. "I did my best. I got the charges reduced from murder. I got you released on bond.”

Andrew slid his window open.

Late-morning sun fluttered into the carriage as they turned onto King Street past the post office. They edged around a beer wagon. Two men rolled barrels down a ramp. Behind their iron fences, the city's gardens flourished. The scents of decay and rebirth made the air shimmer.

"You must prepare a plea. Convince Judge Boyd you've seen the error of your ways.”

"What does it matter?”

His lawyer's face was sour as an unripe pippin. "Judge Boyd has considerable sentencing leeway. He's gone easy on Klansmen who repented. President Grant doesn't want martyrs.”

Andrew's mind drifted on the lawyer's sea of ifs, buts, and maybes.

"We cannot contest what you did...”

A Unionist nonentity before the war, Ellsworth had been a reluctant advocate, torn between his desire to be counted among the Old Gentry while never condoning nor appearing to condone the Klan. That same gentry had been glad when the Klan frightened Republicans out of the legislature, provided they didn't have to know how the frightening was done.

Andrew said, "Can't make a cake without breaking niggers.”

"What? What's that you say?”

Andrew Ravanel hadn't been afraid to get his hands dirty. Josie Watling, Archie Flytte — maybe they didn't scrape off their boots before they walked into the drawing room, maybe they didn't care where they spat, but they weren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Andrew's palms itched. " What ... ?”

Ellsworth asked.

"I said," Andrew repeated, "here we are.”

Ellsworth's office was three doors down from the Unionist lawyer Louis Petigru's. Petigru hadn't survived the war. While he was alive, everybody had reviled Petigru for his Unionist views. They praised him after the man was safely dead. That's how things were.

Andrew stepped down from the carriage.

"Come into my office. We have work to do.”

"I thought I might see a minstrel show.”

"You'd what?" Ellsworth gaped.

"The Rabbit Foot Minstrels are at Hibernian Hall. A matinee.”

The lawyer removed his glasses and pinched his nose.

Andrew asked, "Is Rhett Butler paying you to defend me?”

"Why shouldn't I defend you?”

"You might get your hands dirty.”

"Colonel Ravanel, I already have!" Ellsworth snapped. "Charleston's better homes are no longer open to me. I don't know when we can return to St. Michael's. My wife and I cannot hold our heads up in decent company.”

"Sir," Andrew said, "you'd hold your head higher if you emptied the rocks out of it.”

"Eh? What did you say?”

"I said there's a matinee.”

"What are you talking about? We've got to work on your plea.”

"What made you think I wanted to plead?”

"You'd rather face ten years at hard labor?”

Andrew snorted a harsh laugh. "Sir, I have faced worse.”

"Be here, at the office, tomorrow by eight. We'll prepare your statement then." The lawyer spoke to Andrew's back.

Andrew rented a bay gelding at the Mills Hotel livery. He'd stayed at the Mills since the trial opened. He hadn't asked who was paying his bills or who'd put up his bond.

A decent horse under him, beautiful Charleston at his feet, and a fine day! What more could any man ask? Andrew tipped his hat to white and black alike. The negresses turned away; some ducked into doorways. Ladies pretended they didn't see him.

Poor whites and prostitutes waved or blew him a kiss. The comedy amused him.

Charleston's rice trade was finished — reduced to fading signs on boarded-up businesses: JAMES MULROONEY: RICE FACTOR; JENKINS COOPERAGE: RICE CASKS, A SPECIALTY.

The harbor was full of bustling steamers. Andrew dismounted, tied his horse, and leaned on the rail.

A negro boy, eight or nine years old, came along, pressed his skinny buttocks against the rail, and rutched. His shirt was out at the armpits, his trousers were belted with rope, and he was barefoot. "Plenty boats," he ventured.

When Andrew looked at him, the boy slid away.

"I won't hurt you,'' Andrew said. "You needn't be afraid of me.”

"I ain't scared of you nohow," the boy said, but came no nearer.

"These ships go everywhere in the world.”

"Naw, not them li'l things!”

"Some mighty little boats have crossed the ocean.”

"I know 'bout boats," the boy said scornfully. "My Daddy works in the fish market.”

"If we put you niggers in those ships, we could send you back to Africa.

Would you like that?”

The boy shook his head vigorously. "I never been to no Africa." So not to disappoint the friendly white man, he added, "I been to Savannah once.”

As he mounted, Andrew flipped the boy a dime.

He rode down Anson Street, past Miss Polly's old sporting house.

What a time they had had! Lord, Lord, what a time! Edgar Puryear, Rhett Butler, Henry Kershaw — what a time! And Jack Ravanel. What would his father advise him? Andrew muttered in Old Jack's tones, "Ride like hell, boy! Don't waste time lookin' over your shoulder.”

Miss Polly's was roofless and shell-pocked. A yellowed muslin curtain dangled from a second-story window. How eagerly they had sought life.

They couldn't wait for life to come to them; they must meet it halfway.

Rhett Butler had been his particular friend. Andrew had gambled with Rhett Butler, drunk with him, and they'd galloped breakneck into the sunrise.

Dear God, Andrew thought, I've lost everyone.

He drew up before the East Bay Inn and waited until Jamie Fisher came out, a white apron around his waist. "Ah," Andrew cried, "the boldest scout in the Confederacy.”

Jamie's apron was spattered with what looked like tomato pulp.

"I didn't come to the trial. I thought you wouldn't want me there.

Judge Boyd?”

"Pronounces sentence tomorrow. My lawyer thinks I'll get off light if I grovel, but" — Andrew grinned — "if the Pit Bull is out of sorts or Mrs. Pit Bull quarrels with the judge over the breakfast table, he might give me ten years. You know how I thrived in the penitentiary.”

"Andrew!”

He shook his head. "Jamie, don't worry. It won't come to that.”

"Andrew, won't you come inside? Juliet would love to see you.”

"I bear my dear sister no animosity. I forgive everyone. I forgive the Yankees, the niggers, even that nigger-loving President Grant. But...

some other time. Jamie, you and I have somewhere to go.”

"Andrew, I'm preparing — “

"No buts, Jamie. We're attending a matinee at the Hibernian Hall — the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, direct from Phila-damn-delphia. The headliner is?" Andrew applauded. "Why, none other than my nigger, Cassius!”

"Andrew, my guests ...”

"For old times' sake, Jamie.”

Jamie had moisture in his eyes, "On the day before your sentencing, Andrew? Are you mad?”

Andrew Ravanel grinned. "Why yes, Jamie. You know I am.”

The wooden-legged veteran selling tickets snapped to attention. "Colonel Ravanel, glad you come, sir. These boys put on a great show. You won't be disappointed.”

"Where'd you lose the leg?”

The man smacked his wooden leg like a soldier slapping a rifle stock.

"Sharpsburg, Colonel. Let me get the manager. You and Mr...”

"My scout, Jamie Fisher.”

When Andrew made to pay, the man wouldn't take his money. The manager arrived, apologizing that the audience wasn't so high-toned as Andrew was used to, and escorted Andrew and Jamie to the best seats in the house. The men they displaced were inclined to dispute until told for whom their seats were required. They doffed their caps and one man saluted, saying, "God bless you, sir" and "You taught those Yankees a thing or two" and "Ten more like you and, by God, we'd have won the war," at which sentiment, the house broke out in rebel yells.

The manager cordoned off their chairs with a rope. Men seated beyond the rope offered them flasks, cigars, and plugs of tobacco. Andrew's eyes fixed on the curtain, where painted nymphs and cherubs frolicked.

The audience was rough. The women were bawds and whores. A handful of Federal soldiers sat in the last rows.

That Patriotic Ball, so long ago, when he'd first tried to seduce Rosemary Butler — Lord, she'd been gangly and fresh as a newborn filly — that ball had been in this room. Andrew wondered if that Confederate eagle was still painted on the floor, entombed beneath layers of dirt and spit and trampled cigar butts.

Rosemary bore no resemblance to that leggy girl who had enchanted him. Andrew said, "Don't fidget, Jamie. Everybody loves us here.”

There was rustling behind the painted curtain before a banjo clanged, frailing the notes. Andrew elbowed Jamie. That'd be Cassius.

The curtain opened on a stage and a semicircle of empty chairs. As the offstage banjo plunked "Old Dan Tucker," white men in blackface pranced in to stop before each chair, eyes front, still as statues. Tambo and Mr. Bones had the end chairs, and the armchair center stage was the Interlocutor's.

Jangling his tambourine, Tambo took his seat. The Interlocutor marched in, bowed and froze halfway through his bow. In blackface like the white players, Cassius ambled across the stage, grinning and mugging, until he reached Mr. Bones's chair, where he, too, froze.

The Interlocutor revived from his frozen bow and strolled past his company, miming astonishment, as if he'd never seen any of the performers before.

He prodded them as a child might if loosed in a wax museum.

INTERLOCUTOR: Gentlemen, be seated.

[Tambo's tambourine and Cassius's banjo made a crossfire.]

BONES: Music makes me feel so happy!

TAMBO: Well, you ain't goin' to be happy no more. You're going to be a 7th Cavalry soldier and I'm goin' to train you. I'm a first-class soldier trainer, I is. I'm a lion trainer, I is.

BONES: YOU is a lion trainer?

TAMBO: That's what I said. I'ze a hard-boiled lion trainer, I is.

BONES: You're a lion son of a gun.

TAMBO: Was your pappy a soldier?

BONES: Yes sir, he was at the battle of Bull Run. He was one of the Yankees what run.

[Rebel yells.] [More jokes followed by banjo and tambourine duets and sentimental ballads.

For forty minutes, the audience sang along with familiar tunes and shouted old jokes' punch lines.] BONES: I got a poem I can recite.

INTERLOCUTOR: Well, go ahead and recite it.

BONES: Mary had a little lamb, Her father killed it dead, And now it goes to school with her Between two hunks of bread.

INTERLOCUTOR: Mr. Bones, it's a good thing you can play that banjo better than you can write poetry.

At this invitation, Cassius played for twenty minutes without interruption.

He moved his audience from patriotic fervor to sentimental tears. His dance tunes pulled them into the aisles.

After his final note, Cassius froze again, chairs scraped, and men coughed.

The Interlocutor said, "Corporal Cassius: Pride of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels, finest banjo picker North or South. Boys, Cassius is a Confederate veteran.”

When the rebel yell rose again, the Yankee soldiers slipped out of the hall.

Chuckling, Andrew said to Jamie, "A nigger pretending to be a white man pretending to be a nigger. Now, that's unusual.”

For their finale, the Rabbit Foot Minstrels promenaded, singing rousing tunes, until the manager jumped onto the stage, "Ladies and gentlemen, your attention! We are honored to have a hero among us this afternoon: Colonel Andrew Ravanel, the Tennessee Will of the Wisp, the Carolina Cougar, the Thunderbolt of the White Knights of the ... of the ..." He shook his head. "Can't say that name. It'd get me in deep!”

Laughter and cheers. Despite Jamie's protests, Jamie and Andrew were propelled onto the stage and the troupe resumed promenading while Cassius strummed "Dixie." Performers and audience sang until the manager drew the curtains.

When the curtains opened for bows, Andrew and Jamie stood at attention stage front. The troupe took four curtain calls before the Interlocutor called it quits and clapped Andrew on the back as if he were a fellow trouper. Some minstrel men left the stage, others shared a flask. Cassius rested his banjo on a chair and sat on the floor beside it, sticking out his legs. "Colonel, Captain. Been a long time.”

Andrew chuckled, "The last time I saw you, boy, you were climbin' an Ohio riverbank like the hounds of hell were after you.”

"Oh my, I was scared. Them Yankees was killin' everybody in sight!”

He shook his head. "Them olden times, mercy! I lives in Philadelphia now.

Got me a wife and two baby girls.”

"Philadelphia? Don't you miss the Low Country?”

Cassius smiled faintly. "Rabbit Foot Minstrels, we been everywhere — Boston, Buffalo, all over the country." He cocked his head, "How you farin', Mister Jamie? You find yourself a wife?”

Jamie made a wry face. "Haven't found a woman who'll put up with me.”

Andrew's eyes gleamed. "You're a headliner now, aren't you, boy? Bet you got plenty of money. All the money you need. You remember when I tried to buy you and Langston Butler's overseer shamed me?”

"I remember bein' sold, Colonel Andrew. Ain't the kind of thing a man forgets.”

Jamie said, "Andrew, I've got to get back to the Inn. Maybe you'll join us for supper?”

"You gonna invite this boy here for supper, too? Not much difference twixt him and your damn Yankees. He's got money. He can pay.”

"I believe" — Cassius started to rise — "I'll get this nigger makeup off me.”

When Andrew shoved him, Cassius and the chair went over backward.

Cassius's banjo skidded across the floor with a metallic ring. Cassius caught himself on his hands.

"I'm just a banjo picker!" he said to nobody in particular. Andrew lifted his boot and stamped it on Cassius's right hand like a man smashing a spider.

He would have stamped again if Jamie hadn't grabbed him with surprisingly strong arms and dragged him off as the manager entreated, "Colonel Ravanel, consider what you are doing, sir.”

Moaning, Cassius tucked his hand to his chest.

"Nothing's changed. You got that, boy!" Andrew was shouting as Jamie wrestled him outside. "Nothing has changed!”

Outside Hibernian Hall, Andrew rubbed his mouth.

His chest heaving for air, Jamie Fisher kept a short distance away. The short distance was a great distance. "Good-bye, Andrew. I wish you well. I have always wished you well.”

Bottle trees lined the lane to Congress Haynes's old fishing camp. At first, there'd only been a few bottles and Andrew had knocked them down. But whenever he visited the camp, there were more bottles, until the 975 niggers had blue, green, red, and clear glass bottles tied to the branches of every tree and bush strong enough to bear them. Colored light spots chased down the lane when the sun struck the glass and the faintest breeze was enough to set them jingling. One night, he and Archie Flytte had waited up, hoping to catch a nigger hanging a bottle, but Archie got jumpy after the moon set and the wind started. When Andrew asked if he was afraid, Archie was scornful. The bottles were supposed to scare off the spirits of the dead, and Archie wasn't dead by a long sight. But Archie left for Georgia before midnight and Andrew got drunk, and in the morning the cypress beside the porch, not ten feet from where he'd passed out, glistened with bottles that hadn't been there the night before.

The camp's broken front door had yawned open since Custer's cavalrymen booted it in.

Excepting rat droppings and leaves blown across the floor, the cabin was as he'd left it.

He'd been treated well in that overcrowded prison camp. Hard evidence against Klansmen was hard to find and many witnesses were afraid to testify. The Yankees turned Klansmen loose because they couldn't get enough evidence or didn't have enough room or simply lost patience. Josie Watling hadn't been caught and Archie Flytte hadn't come back after the night of the bottle trees.

When Andrew was in the prison camp, Rosemary had brought clean clothes.

She said, "I'm sorry. I'm sure this is hard for you.”

"Not at all," Andrew had replied. "I'm used to being imprisoned.”

He'd lied. The camp was a vise whose jaws screwed tighter and tighter, squeezing the life out of him.

When Lawyer Ellsworth announced he was released on bond, Andrew stepped out of the camp gate, newborn, like a boy in the exciting world with no school today. But when Andrew returned to 46 Church Street, his wife wouldn't let him in.

At dusk, the wind off the river set the bottle trees to jingling. It was a fine sound. Say what you would about niggers, they made music.

Andrew felt fine. Late on a gentle spring afternoon, the river rolling past as it had before he came and would after he was gone, and all the lawyers and judges gone, too, Rosemary, Jamie — all of them gone.

Poor dear Charlotte had loved him. She had known who he was and loved him anyway. Sometimes he heard Charlotte's sweet voice in the bottle trees.

Andrew dressed in his Confederate Colonel's uniform and sat outside in the dusk. He'd forgotten how stiff the military collar was.

Small boats sailed up and down the river. Swallows swooped after insects.

A heron landed in the shallows and stalked fish, lifting one leg at a time. That'd be the last thing a fish would see, that motionless leg in the water, looking just like a weed or stick.

Andrew's revolver was as familiar to him as Charlotte had been. The long browned barrel was white at the muzzle from much firing; that chip on the grip was where he'd cracked some nigger's skull.

As the moon rose, a pregnant vixen came out of the bushes to fish for crayfish. Andrew considered shooting her but decided not to.

To the merciful shall mercy be given.

At first light, Andrew Ravanel, late Colonel, C.S.A., went inside to write a letter to his firstborn son and shot himself.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Legacies

The Chapeau Rouge had just closed when a heavy knock brought Mac- Beth to the door. He cracked it open and then slammed it shut. "Miss Belle ... They's some mens, Miss Belle, wants talk to you.”

"At this time of night? Who ...”

"Miss Belle ..." MacBeth was rigid with fear. "They ain't wearin' no hoods, but they's Kluxers.”

Belle ran to her bedroom for her revolver, and when she returned, Mac- Beth had vanished.

Belle stood indecisively, listening to feet shuffle on the porch. She took a deep breath, cocked her revolver, and jerked the door open. "Jesus Christ," she gasped.

Isaiah Watling slapped his daughter's cheek so hard, she almost pulled the trigger. "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”

"Poppa! After twenty years you hit me...”

"Why didn't you tell me, Daughter? Why didn't you say something?”

A younger man was with Isaiah and a third at the curb held their horses.

Belle was trembling so violently, she used both hands to uncock her revolver.

"I trusted him, Daughter. I believed the man who dishonored you was a Christian gentleman.”

The porch creaked when the younger man shifted his weight. He cleared his throat. " 'Lo, Cousin Belle.”

At her father's impatient gesture, the young man withdrew into the shadows.

"We were young, Poppa," Belle said. "Was you ever young?”

"No," Isaiah said, "I had no time to be young.”

His eyebrows were untrimmed. He had clumps of hair in his nostrils and ears. Belle smelled the bitter metallic stink of an outraged soul.

"You have your mother's eyes." Isaiah pursed his lips. "I'd forgotten that." His curt head shake buried that memory. "I trusted Colonel Ravanel.

I trusted him.”

"Andrew loved me, Poppa. I cried when I heard ... what he done to himself.”

Isaiah rubbed his hand across his face. "Colonel Ravanel left things for the boy — his pistol, watch, a note...”

"My Tazewell is a gentleman, Poppa," Belle insisted. "He's got schooling and he's in the cotton business in New Orleans. He even bought himself a house!" Belle rubbed her cheek.

He said, "I should never have come to the Low Country. Your mother hated to leave Mundy Hollow, but I said we had to start over somewheres else. So we come to Broughton. I was Master Butler's man, body and soul, for thirty-two years. Thirty-two years, body and soul.”

"This parcel... it's from Tazewell's father?”

"Only ones besides us at the Colonel's burying were Yankees lookin' for Klansmen.”

"Uncle Isaiah never held with the Klan." Belle's cousin grinned at her.

"Uncle Isaiah's ... 'fussy.' Him 'n' me, we found the Colonel. We was going to spirit him away to Texas, but the Colonel got his own self away first.

I reckon he would have done right good in Texas.”

"This is Josie, Abraham's son.”

Josie touched his hat. "Pleased to meet you, cuz. Nice place you got.

That's Archie Flytte with the horses.”

Belle's hands trembled. "Father, did you love Mama?”

"Your mother was devout.”

"Did you love her?”

"Daughter, I love the Lord.”

Belle had believed her father was a simple man; she'd never before guessed how much his simplicity cost him.

"Colonel Ravanel lied to me," Isaiah said. "And your brother, Shadrach, died for Colonel Ravanel's lie. Shadrach never had no days to repent of his sins.”

An unkind thought flashed through Belle's mind: Shadrach died because he'd challenged a better shot.

Josie said, "Dead is dead.”

"Rhett Butler lied.”

"He never did. Rhett never said nothin'. He just let 'em believe whatever they wanted to believe.”

"Butler murdered your brother and disgraced his parents. Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land the Lord thy God has given you.”

"Even now, after all this hurtfulness ..." Belle's hands opened and closed helplessly. "You can't forgive?”

Belle's father handed her the parcel. "By my lights, I did my best.”

The parcel was heavier than it looked. "I reckon we all do the best we can," Belle said. "Won't you come in? I've a picture of your grandson.”

For one moment, she thought Isaiah was going to take off his hat and step inside. They'd go to the kitchen — they wouldn't need to be in the business part of the house. She'd make coffee for her father. She remembered he took sugar in his coffee — heaping tablespoons of sugar.

Isaiah Watling touched the package. "Give these to your son." He turned away.

"Uncle likes to say our day will come," Josie observed, "but it ain't come yet.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Ashley's Birthday Party

Melanie was preparing a surprise birthday party — Ashley's first since the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, eleven years ago, when he and she had announced their betrothal.

The Wilkeses' home was nearly ready. The mantelpiece had been scrubbed with Sapolio, the gilt mirror frame had been dusted, every grate and stove was freshly blacked, and the winter carpets had been taken up and brushed. Pork and Peter had sprinkled tobacco on them before carrying them to the attic.

As chairwoman of the Confederate Widows and Orphans Society, Melanie knew all Georgia's Confederate greats: General John Gordon, five times wounded at Sharpsburg; Robert Augustus Toombs, Confederate Senator and Secretary of State; even Alexander Stephens had accepted Melanie's invitation. Vice President Stephens's two-volume justification of secession, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, had pride of place in many Southern households (where it was more honored than read). Ashley's spinster sister, India, wanted the book beside the family Bible in the parlor, but Melanie said no. "What if someone decides to raise a constitutional issue with Mr. Stephens? What will happen to Ashley's party then?" Mr. Stephens's volumes remained locked in the bookcase.

India was an efficient worker, but she upset the negroes. When set to a task, Aunt Pittypat managed — she'd polished all the glassware, including that borrowed for the occasion — but left to her own devices, Pitty flittered from one unfinished task to another. Only Scarlett worked without instructions.

Scarlett was the best negro driver, too.

Since preparations were moving along nicely, Melanie took a cup of tea to the second-floor landing, her desk, and her interrupted letter to Rosemary.

Melanie entirely approved of Rosemary's decision to teach at the Female Seminary. "You have suffered a terrible grief, dear friend. The children will heal you as you instruct them.”

She tapped the pen against her teeth, thinking.

As for myself... when I learned I could have no more children, I assumed I would be as satisfied with the warmth that attends lovemaking as by the lovemaking itself. Ashley is an affectionate husband but absent the — if you will permit me — "tender violence" of the act — I am blushing, dear friend — our heart passion fades year by year, unvarying season by unvarying season. Oh, I know, a decent woman shouldn't desire her husbands ardent embraces, but...

“Miss Melly! Miss Melly!" Scarlett's servant Pork stomped upstairs and loomed over her like a tree poised to fall. Although Pork couldn't read, Melly slipped her letter under the blotter. "Miss Melly! That Archie, he won't let me hang no more lanterns in the garden. He done told me to git. I'ze skeered of that old man!”

"Ask Scarlett what to do, Pork," Melanie replied. "I'm sure there's other work to do.”

After the big negro grumbled back down the stairs, Melanie inked her pen.

Sometimes I happen across your old Overseers daughter, Belle Watling.

Dear Friend I have only known my Ashley, whose touches were so lavish, his pleasure giving so much keener than his pleasure taking. I have fancied asking Belle (but of course could not), "How is it to have had so many men? Are all men the same?”

Oh, Rosemary, it has been eight years — eight long years — since Dr.

Meade told Ashley I must not bear another child. I know I should put my desires aside — but I cannot. Sometimes, Ashley does or says something; sometimes he catches the light in a certain way and I positively burn for my husbands embraces! Dear Friend he is so beautiful! There are contrivances which would permit intimacies without the consequences we fear, but Ashley, dear Ashley, is too proper, and on the single occasion I dared to mention them, Ashley turned red as one of Pitty's azaleas and he stuttered (Ashley never stutters), saying "Gentlemen do not employ such devices!" I'm sure Belle knows about them and would tell me if I dared to ask.

Scarlett peeked through the banisters at Melanie's ankles and said, "Melly, Pork is perfectly capable of hanging a few Japanese lanterns. Archie gave Pork one of his 'looks' and Pork will be quaking all afternoon. Why do you let that smelly old hillbilly in your house?”

"Archie is so good with the children," Melanie replied.

In the past, Archie had been given to mysterious disappearances and everybody knew he was in the Klan. But he was wonderful with the children.

After Governor Bullock fled, Scarlett stopped entertaining, and her Peachtree Street mansion became a mausoleum. The Butler children spent more time in the Wilkeses' home than their own. Sour, one-legged old Archie Flytte entertained them for hours.

"If Peter is done polishing the floors, Pork and he can lay the summer matting," Melanie said.

"Humph." Scarlett's head disappeared.

Melanie Wilkes tapped her pen against her teeth.

Dear Rosemary, I am loath to add to your burdens but must tell you that last Saturday, over luncheon at the Kimball House, Scarlett and Rhett lit into each other like cats and dogs. I heard about their quarrel from three different sources! Their only real bond is their shared love for little Bonnie — "Bonnie Blue." Your niece is a sunbeam who lights everywhere she goes. Mrs. Meade makes Bonnie her special pecan Judge and Mrs. Elsing sets the dear little thing on her lap and tells her how things were when she was a girl. Those who once deprecated your brother have taken him into their hearts. Not their least reason is the love Rhett lavishes on his daughter.

All she needs say is, "Daddy, pick me up!" Rhett picks her up, and when she tugs at his mustache or hair or when she is fretful, as all children sometimes are, Rhett never loses patience with his Bonnie Blue.

Scarlett was peeking through the banisters again, "Melanie, who are you writing to?”

"I am writing Rosemary. Two tired housewives complaining about their children. Sometimes, dear Scarlett" — Melanie slipped the letter into the drawer and turned the key — "I wish I had your gift for being in the world. I wish I had your will!”

"If will was as powerful as it's supposed to be, Melly, we'd presently be Confederate citizens. I'm going to Ashley's sawmill to see Hugh Elsing.”

Melanie clapped her hands. "That's perfect. That's absolutely perfect.

Could you possibly keep Ashley there until five? If Ashley comes home earlier, he'll catch us finishing up a cake or something and his surprise will be ruined.”

Hastily, Melanie concluded her letter.

Dear Rosemary, jealousy is so corrosive that I'd almost rather be betrayed than live in fear of betrayal! If I could not put my trust in Ashley, if I did not believe he loves me, I would go mad.

I knew from childhood that Ashley and I were intended for each other.

We are cousins, and "the Wilkeses always marry cousins. " We were spared the tribulations of courtship — does he or doesn't he love me; do I or don't I truly care for him? I knew I was to marry Ashley and I loved him. Not love Ashley? I cannot imagine it!

Yet, sometimes, I wonder how it might have been... Are Scarlett's passions richer and more profound than mine, or have I read too many novels? Must love always be such a puzzle?

Melanie signed and sealed the letter. Downstairs, Pork and Uncle Peter were arguing how the summer floor mats should be laid. Melanie could smell furniture polish and baking pies.

How grateful she was! During the War, she'd been so afraid for Ashley.

One alert sharpshooter, one of the myriad illnesses that killed soldiers weakened by hunger and privation — there were so many ways she might have lost her precious husband. Melanie Hamilton Wilkes bowed her head and gave thanks.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Desire

Desire too long denied makes the heart sick.

Sun pouring through the windows illuminated order books and a calendar whose dates were crossed off with X's. Sawmill dust furred windowsills, shelves, Ashley Wilkes's rolltop desk, and his hat.

That hat was their mute chaperone.

A man and a woman alone together, after so many years.

Scarlett notices the gray in Ashley's hair and thinks, He will never be young again, and the thought makes her want to cry for him and for herself.

Scarlett has not been with a man since Bonnie Blue was conceived.

Ashley has not been with a woman for eight years.

It is Saturday afternoon. The whining saws are shut down and oiled for the Sabbath; there's no lumber crashing onto ricks, no foreman shouting orders. The mill hands have been paid and gone home. Dust motes dance in the sunlight.

"The days are getting longer," Ashley says.

Scarlett says, "Yes, yes, they are.”

A spring fly, one of the fat, lazy flies that appear as seasons change bats against the window glass, trying to reach the outdoors. It will die, as so many of God's creatures do, without ever fulfilling its desire.

Scarlett O'Hara is thinking how sad life is, how unutterably sad, as she steps into the embrace she has wanted for so long.

Ashley and Scarlett fit perfectly in each other's arms.

The office door bangs open. India Wilkes, Archie Flytte, and Mrs. Elsing are in the doorway. Gaping.

Scarlett is lost.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE She

The cuckold Rhett Butler rode Atlanta's dark streets. He galloped his horse down Decatur until it was a country road, before wheeling back into the city.

When his great black horse slowed, Rhett used his spurs savagely.

"Damn you, behave! You will behave!”

He could not trust himself. That was his worst realization — knowing he could not trust himself. Four years. For four years he'd slept alone while she mooned after Ashley Wilkes.

Earlier tonight, he'd forced her to attend Melanie's party. Thinking what? That Melly would denounce the adulterous pair? What a comedy! Ashley and Melanie playacting the happily married couple. Melanie welcoming Scarlett as a sister while vicious whispers took wings behind ladies' fans.

The cuckold Rhett Butler. Oh no, she hadn't given her body to Ashley.

Just her goddamned, yearning, hopeful, scheming soul.

He emptied his flask. He emptied a second. He galloped by Chapeau Rouge without seeing. MacBeth, who'd raised a hand in greeting, let it fall to his side.

He couldn't go near his wife until he could trust himself. His wife! He couldn't go home until Scarlett was safe behind her locked bedroom door.

"Home." Rhett spat the epithet between his horse's hooves.

When he came into the parlor, she was there. She was sneaking a glass of brandy. She paled when she saw him.

His resolutions vanished like smoke. His hands ached with the need to hurt her. He would have killed her on the spot. Killing would cure her of yearning for Ashley.

"You drunken fool. Take your hands off me.”

"I've always admired your spirit, my dear. Never more than now, when you are cornered.”

"You can't understand Ashley or me. You are jealous of something you can't understand." Regal as a queen, she tossed her head and straightened her wrap, rising to go.

He caught her. He pressed her shoulders against the wall.

"Jealous, am I? And why not? Oh yes, I'm jealous of Ashley Wilkes. I know Ashley Wilkes and his breed. I know he is honorable and a gentleman.

And that, my dear, is more than I can say for you — or for me, for that matter. We are not gentlemen and we have no honor, have we? That's why we flourish like green bay trees.”

When he turned to the decanter, she bolted.

Rhett caught her at the bottom of the stairs. His hands slipped under her dressing gown onto her sleek skin. He whispered hoarsely, "You turned me out on the town while you chased him. By God, this is going to be one night when there are only two in my bed!" Rhett scooped and carried her up the broad staircase of the great house he'd built for his bride. She trembled in his arms, mesmerized by his rage. On the landing, when she took breath to scream, he stopped her mouth with his own. She was his creature; he had nurtured her and taught her and devoted himself to her. She was his and he would use her as he saw fit.

He carried her into the darkness at the head of the stairs, his mouth pressed to hers, their breath intermingling.

In her bed, in her dark room, she opened to him like a flower and he crushed that flower for its loveliness. Even when she let her love roll down, even that couldn't quench his hunger.

Hours later, Rhett rose from the bed where Scarlett slept, exhausted.

He didn't know who had been the victor, who the victim. He pressed his aching head between his hands. His eyes were sore, his lips were sore, his tongue was swollen, his body was sticky with his sweat and hers. He smelled like the woman he had violated.

"My God," Rhett Butler whispered, "I am just like my father.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Eugenie Victoria Butler

When Bonnie Blue's parents were fighting — which they did an awful lot — the house swelled up with anger, until Bonnie put her hands over her ears so she wouldn't hear it pop. Yesterday had been 'specially bad.

The grown-ups were going to a party at Aunt Melly's house, so Bonnie thought everybody would be happy, but that afternoon Big Sam came 'round to the back, and when Mammy heard what Big Sam had to say, she put on her sorrowful face, and pretty soon all the servants had sorrowful faces and they wouldn't tell Bonnie, but she knew it was something bad.

Her Mother came home and hid in her bedroom, but when Daddy Rhett came home, he made her go to Aunt Melly's party. Bonnie knew Mother didn't want to go to the party, but Daddy Rhett made her go.

That night, Bonnie couldn't sleep, and when she heard loud voices downstairs, she opened her door just a crack and she saw Daddy Rhett carrying Mother up the stairs just like she was a baby. They were kissing, so maybe they'd made up and weren't going to fight anymore.

Next day, Mother didn't come down until almost suppertime and she was happy as a cat with fresh cream, but Daddy Rhett was gone. When Bonnie asked when he'd be home, Mother smiled mysteriously and said, "When he's done feeling guilty, sweetheart." That evening, Mother went around humming, and after dinner she brought out the stereograph and Wade and Ella and Bonnie Blue sat with her on the sofa, taking turns looking at pictures of a big river in China and Chinamen wearing hats like upside-down bowls.

Mother expected Daddy Rhett to come home, but he didn't. Not that day nor the day after nor the day after that. Mother stopped humming and was short with everybody, and when Wade suggested they take out the stereograph and look at pictures, she snapped at him.

When Daddy Rhett did come home, they fought again — worse than ever! — and Daddy got so mad at her Mother, he threw his cigar down on the parlor carpet, which stunk up the whole house!

Later, Mammy pretended to be cheerful as she packed Bonnie's clothes, saying Bonnie was going away with Daddy Rhett for a while, but Mammy's old sad eyes knew better.

"Mammy," Bonnie asked, "what's a divorce?”

"No such a thing! They ain't doin' no such a thing!" When Mammy sighed, all of her sighed, not just her mouth. "They just considerin', that's all.”

Belle Watling was waiting at the railway station.

When Bonnie was introduced to Belle — whose name Bonnie had heard a lot when Mother was angry — Bonnie drew herself up and asked, "Are you really a fallen woman?”

Belle's smile dimmed and then brightened again. "Well, honey, I reckon I am.”

"Where'd you fall from?" the child asked.

"Not too high, honey. I reckon where I fell from wasn't too high." Belle took Bonnie's hand to help the child into their Pullman car.

Bonnie was delighted by the Pullman. She couldn't get over how couches became beds, and she made the porter transform them three times before she was satisfied.

Bonnie knew her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, and when she saw pictures of queens in storybooks, she knew they were just like Mother. Daddy Rhett was the kindest, smartest, funniest man, and the best horseman, too. Why, his black stallion was almost as fast as her pony!

Bonnie knew they loved her and she knew they loved each other, too.

So why couldn't they just say so and not fight anymore? But that was before and this was now, and Bonnie raced up and down the Pullman car with Prissy chasing her. "Watch out for that table! Don't go out that door! We coming to a tunnel! Cover you eyes!”

The world flashed by the windows. Plowmen were turning the earth in glistening red furrows. In towns, people got on the train or got off the train and stood on the platform, greeting and gossiping, and luggage carts trundled and the bell clanged and the conductor shouted "All 'board!" and swung on the train. Bonnie wondered if he ever got left behind.

Sitting in Belle Watling's lap, Bonnie asked about water lilies in the swamp they were crossing and a blackened plantation house on a hill. "Are there ghosts?" Bonnie asked.

"Yes, honey, there are. But they won't hurt you.”

When they sat down for dinner, Daddy Rhett complimented Belle on her gown and she blushed, "Miss Smithers helps me pretend I'm a lady.”

Bonnie's father's smile was so sad. "Belle, dear Belle. You know we can't choose our heart's desire.”

"You think I don't know that, Captain Smarty?" Belle retorted. "You think I don't know a thing or two about desires?”

He laughed then, his old laugh, and Bonnie's pealing laughter harmonized and Belle's mock-stern expression dissolved into giggles.

The next morning, Bonnie stood on the seat as their train rumbled into Charleston. When her father offered his hand to guide her through the big brick depot, Bonnie preferred to walk by herself, thank you, but she let him lift her into the cab.

Bonnie was glad to see her cousin Louis Valentine again. While her father and her aunt Rosemary talked about the things grown-ups talk about, Belle and Prissy took Bonnie and Louis Valentine to the promenade to see the boats. Prissy chattered with Belle just like Belle wasn't a fallen woman.

Bonnie wanted to stay longer in Charleston, but her father said they couldn't. Bonnie pouted until they were back in their dear familiar Pullman car. She ate her dinner and climbed into her little bed. Since Bonnie was afraid of the dark, her father left a light burning where she could see it through the bed curtains.

Bonnie woke to cypress swamps that gave way to shacks and shanties, then more substantial buildings, and then their track joined another as they sped past old stone houses Daddy Rhett called "the Vieux Carr?. It's the old French Quarter, Bonnie." Their train rolled along the levees above the wharves and the ships in the big river. Bonnie was fascinated by the steamboats and she begged until Daddy Rhett gave his laughing promise that yes, yes, they would take a steamboat ride. Because as Bonnie Blue asserted, "I had to leave my pony behind and I miss him very much, but I shan't miss him so much when I'm taking a steamboat ride.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN A Catholic City

A spring morning in the Vieux Carre: Church bells echoed in the narrow streets, the birds-of-paradise were flowering, and behind wrought iron gates overripe lemons and oranges were dropping from the trees.

Waiting beside Rhett for a cab, Belle Watling remembered the pregnant young girl she'd been in this city so many years ago.

"What did you say, Belle?" Rhett asked.

"I spect I was talkin' to myself. I was thinkin' how New Orleans seemed like the biggest city in the world." Belle added, "Lord a mercy, I was scared.”

Rhett helped her into an open landaulet. "Do you remember when you and me met up outside the St. Louis Hotel? That Didi woman you was with? Mercy, what a beauty! She was wearin' the brightest red hat I'd ever seen. Sometimes I still dream about that hat..." She touched Rhett's arm, "If you hadn't found me that day, Rhett, I...”

"But I did, Belle." He smiled. "Very occasionally, things turn out better than we expect.”

Belle knew Rhett's marriage wasn't one of those things. That foolishness between Mr. Wilkes and Miss Scarlett had birthed something terrible.

Belle'd never known Rhett so drawn and sorrowful.

When they stopped at number 12 Royal Street, Rhett said, "I think it best if you meet Taz alone. I don't want his dislike of me ruining things.

I'll be back in an hour.”

"But Rhett!”

He helped her down and gave her Andrew's bequest. "Go on, Belle. Go brave." The cab horse's iron shoes rang on the ancient cobblestones.

Belle had moved Andrew's things from Isaiah's rough paper parcel to a nice poplar box, which seemed more respectful. Now, with the box in her hands, she wondered if she couldn't have found a nicer one — maybe walnut.

Belle told herself, Ruth Belle Watling! Don't be a ninny! and yanked the bellpull more vigorously than she'd intended.

On tenterhooks, she listened for his footsteps and the rasp of drawn bolts. The gate creaked, swinging open. "Maman!”

Belle dissolved in tears. "You've grown a beard!”

"I was just about to go out... I am surprised, so happy you are here!

Please, please come in.”

Taz's little garden was the prettiest Belle had ever seen. Its lime tree was certainly the most fragrant. What a sweet little bench! What a cunning little fish pond! The house — was this her dear son's house? What a perfect little house! Belle sniffled into her handkerchief.

Taz threw his arms out to encompass it all. "Maman, it is yours!”

Belle froze like an animal sensing a trap. "But Taz, my home's in Atlanta.”

"Come in, Maman," Taz adjusted. "Please. I'll make tea. English tea.

Unless you'd rather have water or a glass of wine?”

"Taz, who would have dreamed ..." Belle's gesture was a mother's delight.

"Honey, you've done right well for yourself!”

"Maman, I have done it all for you." Taz flashed his familiar grin. "And I'm not always so pompous. I promise you I'm not. Why didn't you tell me you were coming? Bon Dieu, I am so very happy. Please, let me show you the house." Taz laid Belle's box on a window ledge and led her into the kitchen, which had just enough room for both of them. "Oh," Belle said, "it's so cozy and snug!”

The front bedroom's balcony overlooked the garden. When Taz said, "This will be your room," Belle pretended she hadn't heard. The bedroom in the back had a separate staircase, which would be ideal — as Belle understood — for the young man about town who might come home late.

Back in the parlor, Taz insisted Belle take his new chair, a Suffolk chair, which, he told her, "was made in New York City.”

"I don't believe I ever sat in a more comfortable chair.”

When Belle ran out of things to admire, silence filled the room. The birds twittered loudly in the garden.

"I've missed you, Taz," Belle said.

"I missed you, too." Impulsively, Taz knelt and pressed her hand. "I am a full partner of J. Nicolet. We do a very good business and employ four men.”

Belle beamed at her boy.

Taz rubbed his palm across his forehead. To Belle, that familiar gesture recalled the little boy he'd been, and tears welled in her eyes. He said, "You know what I wish for. I never could fool you.”

Belle went to the window and pushed the shutters open. She said, "I'd forgotten how well things grow in New Orleans.”

"Will you come here and live with me?”

Belle turned to him with a tremulous smile. "Taz, I've a business to look after.”

"Sell it. You won't want for anything. I can provide...”

"Taz, my dear boy, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I can t.

"But Maman," Taz spoke as if to a child, "here in New Orleans, you would be a lady.”

Belle restrained her laugh. Belle Watling, a lady! "No, my darling," she said. "I'd spoil everything. Think what J. Nicolet would say when he learned your mother is nothing but a common — “

The ringing bell saved Belle. She said, "Get the gate, Taz. Rhett and me'll tell you everything you want to know.”

Outside that gate, with Bonnie Blue's tiny hand in his own, Rhett Butler had slipped into that mood where the deepest affections are colored by sorrow and love's losses seem the greater part of love.

How had the boy he'd brought from the Asylum for Orphan Boys become this young man standing before him? The young man's eyes were honest and calm. "Welcome to my home, sir. I owe you an apology.”

"This is my Bonnie Blue," Rhett said.

"Hello," Bonnie piped up. "I'm four. I've had my birthday.”

Taz smiled. "A fine thing it is to have a birthday. But are you sure you're four? You're so tall for four.”

"I am very tall," Bonnie assured him. "I have a pony.”

"A pony! My goodness!" Taz ushered them into his garden.

Poplar box in her lap, Belle waited on the circular stone bench beneath a lime tree. Bonnie dashed to the tiny pool, where goldfish flashed under a carpet of water lilies.

"I thought we'd talk better out-of-doors," Belle said quietly. "Ain't this place pretty, Rhett?”

Taz began, "Sir, I must apologize. I have been an ungrateful fool. I — “

Rhett put a finger to his lips. "Shh.”

"Sir, I — “

"It was nothing, Taz." Rhett grinned. "On second thought, I'm glad it's over." He took Belle's hand. "Your mother and I... for a good many years we were custodians of another man's reputation. A man who had more to lose than we did. Andrew Ravanel was one of the bravest soldiers in the Confederacy. In his last moments, he thought of you.”

"But..." Taz opened the box and stared, unseeing, at a revolver, a Confederate Colonel's epaulets, a heavy silver watch, and a folded piece of paper.

Since the goldfish wouldn't come out from beneath the lily pads, Bonnie ran to the grown-ups and stood on tiptoes to see what was in the young man's box. Maybe today was his birthday.

Rhett said, "The grateful citizens of Cynthiania, Tennessee, gave your father that watch, Taz. There's an inscription.”

Tazewell turned the heavy watch in his hand. "Merde! You're saying Andrew Ravanel was my father? Colonel Andrew Ravanel? Why did you let me think I was your bastard. Why not tell me the truth?”

"Read the note, honey," Belle said softly.

To whom it may concern, I acknowledge Tazewell Watling as my firstborn son and bequeath him these, my worldly goods. I pray he will do better with his life than I have done with mine.

Andrew Ravanel, Colonel, C.S.A.

Taz folded the note. Opened it a second time and stared.

"Taz," Rhett said quietly, "please, sit down.”

When he did, his mother put her arm around him.

Rhett took a deep breath. "I've always loved New Orleans. It's a Catholic city, tolerant, sensual, and wise. The Low Country, where your mother and I grew up, Taz ...”

Rhett stopped and began again. "Planters like my father, Langston Butler, had the power of life and death. Everything and everyone on Broughton Plantation belonged to the Master. Langston's slaves, Langston's overseer, Langston's horses, Langston's overseer's daughter, Langston's wife, Langston's daughter ..." Rhett coughed. "Even Langston Butler's renegade elder son. To trifle with the least of Langston's possessions was to trifle with the Master himself.”

Belle sighed. "Don't it seem so long ago?”

"Taz, it's a long story your mother and I have to tell. Do you think you could find a glass of wine?”

When Taz and Bonnie went in the house, Rhett strolled the garden, hands in pockets, whistling softly.

Taz returned and set the tray on the bench.

"I don't want any wine. I'm too little." Bonnie went back to the pool and lay down on the edge, where the goldfish couldn't see her.

Belle said, "Mama and me kept the Broughton dispensary, and sometimes I'd come into Charleston to the apothecary's for quinine bark, and one day Andrew was there. First time we set eyes on each other, we fell in love.

Don't smile at me, Rhett Butler. You know it happens. Hell, you know it does. Anyway, that afternoon me and Andrew strolled around White Point Park, gabbin' and lookin' at each other. I reckon I wanted to eat him up.

Well, nothin' happened that day and I caught the ferry back to Broughton, but I wasn't really surprised when a negro woman delivered a note sayin' I should meet Andrew at Wilson's Roadhouse.

"Well, I snuck away that day, and a week later I snuck away again, and it wasn't long before we were doin' what the preachers say we shouldn't. It never troubled me none, and if Mama knew, she never said nothin'. I never met none of Andrew's kin nor his fancy friends — until the morning Rhett rode up to Wilson's, and then everybody thought Rhett and me ...

"Andrew was so secretive about us. I always knew we wasn't meant to marry.”

Rhett said, "Andrew's father, Jack, sold land when he had to and wrote as many IOUs as there were fools to accept them. He loved fast horses.”

Bonnie sang, "Come out, little fishies. I won't hurt you.”

"Somehow my father and Jack Ravanel were involved in a rice-factoring syndicate, and when the syndicate collapsed, my father ended up with Jack's IOUs — which pleased neither of them: my father because Jack hated to pay and Jack because if any man in Carolina could squeeze a dollar out of him, that man was Langston Butler.

"Langston let Jack know his patience was running thin. Langston could ruin Jack, and Jack knew it.

"When Jack learned about Andrew and your mother, he worried. If Langston discovered his debtor's son was trifling with his overseer's daughter, that'd be the last straw. Jack ordered Andrew to stop seeing Belle, but Andrew refused.

"Jack always liked to have an edge, and when he didn't have one, he introduced a wild card. I didn't understand until years afterward — but angry, confused Rhett Butler was Old Jack's wild card.

"It worked, too. My father was so busy disowning me, he never found out about Andrew and Belle.”

When Rhett hitched himself into the window casing, his long legs just touched the ground. He offered his cigar case to Taz. When Taz declined, Rhett took his time lighting up.

"Andrew was touchy, proud, and melancholy, but he was my friend. When I came back from West Point disgraced, I lived with the Ravanels.”

"Colonel Jack got you drunk," Belle said stoutly.

Rhett laughed. "Belle, nobody but me gets me drunk. I was desperately unhappy, and Jack merely provided the whiskey and a gloomy porch where I could drink it. After he'd let me stew in my own morose juices long enough, Jack told me his son was involved with a slattern — sorry, Belle — and that if I was Andrew's friend, I'd disentangle him. I have forgotten many things about those days, but I remember that morning...”

"I'm to spoil Andrew's fun? Come now, Jack. “

Colonel Jack's tongue whipped like a snake run over in the road. Jack had ten thousand reasons why Rhett should help Andrew. Rhett was weary, part drunk, and plain didn't give a damn. He'd have done anything just to shut Jack up.

"You'll talk to him, then?"Jack said. "Wilson's Roadhouse? Boy, you're a good'un. Don't anyone tell you you're not. If the slut's father finds out about this, there's no telling...”

Rhett was thoroughly sick of Jack and thoroughly sick of himself, and there are worse things than a ride into the breaking day. Tecumseh's trot was smooth as glass.

The river was changing from black to silver and work gangs' lanterns flickered in the fields before Rhett reached the Summerville crossroads. When he turned into Wilson's stableyard, Andrew was outside, smoking. "Thank God, Rhett. Thank God it's you.”

A lamp glowed in the upstairs room where Belle waited for her lover. That same night, she'd told Andrew she was carrying his baby.

Andrew clutched Rhett's arm. "Rhett, she wants me to marry her. Rhett, I cannot; you know I must not. "Andrew tried a ghastly joke. "I am my father's last negotiable asset!”

When Belle came down into the yard she was in love and beautiful. "Andrew? Who's with you? Why, it's Young Master Butler. " The young woman trusted that her love would see her through anything. "Andrew and I have been ...

keeping company. I got to go home now. Will you take me home, Young Master?”

Rhett would.

The sun rose as the two rode down the main trunk. Silent rice gangs watched them pass, shading their eyes against the sun.

Rhett's mind was clear as it had not been since he left West Point. He felt better than he had in months. Rhett Butler had absolutely nothing more to lose.

Belles cheek was warm against his back.

"Do you love anyone, Young Master?”

"My sister, Rosemary... “

"Ain 't we lucky? Ain 't it better lovin ' than bein ' loved? “

Twenty-four years after that morning ride, Rhett Butler laid his hands on Tazewell Watling's shoulders and said, "Dites moi qui vous aimez, et je vous dirai qui vous ?tes: Tell me who you love and I'll tell you who you are.”

At Taz's suggestion, they dined at Antoine's, where the waiters fussed over Mr. Watling's mother and Captain Butler's little girl. Belle said it was the happiest day of her life.

The next day, they took a train to Baton Rouge to meet Tazewell's Watling's partner. While Rhett, Taz, and J. Nicolet discussed common acquaintances, Belle, Prissy, and Bonnie walked along the bayou, where Prissy was scared half out of her wits when a harmless-looking log turned into an alligator.

In Baton Rouge, they ate at a fisherman's café. Bonnie loved the boudin but shuddered at the langoustine. "It's a big spider!" Bonnie insisted.

Back in New Orleans, they attended the races and saw The Marriage of Figaro at the French Opera House. One entire morning, Rhett and Bonnie rode uptown and downtown on the street railway because that's what Bonnie wanted.

Bonnie lifted her little face to his and said, "I wish Mother was here.”

Rhett's eyes were so sad. "Yes, sugar. I wish she was, too.”

The rains that happy week were tropical rains, which cooled the earth and disappeared into mist as they fell.

Rhett forgot his promise to take his daughter on a steamboat ride. He would regret that unkept promise for the rest of his days.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Miss Melly Asks for Help

A year and a month after Rhett and Bonnie visited New Orleans, Melanie Wilkes wrote her friend:

Dearest Rosemary,

I trust this finds you in good health and spirits. Do you like teaching at the Female Seminary? Rosemary, how can two stick-in-the-muds like us have become such dear friends? Dr. Meade is outside my door issuing instructions to Pittypat. The good doctor leaves me with admonitions and an array of varicolored potions and pills! When men can fix something they fix it. When the repair is beyond them, they harrumph and dither!

Although Dr. Meade blames me for the fix I'm in — I can see reproach in his eyes — he cannot decently utter them. Would any man presume to tell a wife she should have refused her husbands embraces? He is less forbearing with Ashley, and my guilty husband avoids him.

When Dr. Meade manages to ambush Ashley, my husband comes to my room so contrite, I must lift his spirits. Falsely cheerful wife and contrite husband: What geese we are!

Dr. Meade blames Ashley for my pregnancy. Ashley is a gentleman and no gentleman could admit that his mousy, sickly wife has been a Salome whose allures the helpless male could not resist.

Yet, Dear Friend, I confess that unlikely tale is the Truth, that this plain girl can, when needs must, be a Salome of the first order!

A year ago in April, Scarlett and Ashley gave way — only for a moment — to the impulse that had smoldered in them for so many years.

Ashley's sister India, Archie Flytte, and old Mrs. Elsing — Atlanta's prime busybody — caught them in an embrace. Naturally, India raced to me with their news — and on Ashley's birthday, too, with our house prepared to receive guests and Japanese lanterns glowing fetchingly in our garden.

Dear Rosemary, where it comes to my family, I am a mother tiger, and I understood perfectly, as India gleefully delivered her news, that I might undo two marriages, my own and your brother Rhett's. India's face positively glowed with malicious satisfaction. She has always hated Scarlett.

I thought to myself, India, you are Ashley's sister. Why can't you see this must destroy the brother you love as thoroughly as the woman you despise? So I pronounced India a liar. I said that my husband Ashley, and my dear friend Scarlett would never betray me. I ordered India from my house.

When Archie Flytte corroborated India's tale, I expelled him, too. Subsequently, Archie has uttered the vilest threats — not against me — against Scarlett and Rhett! I fear they have a bad enemy there.

When my guilty Ashley returned home, I never gave the poor man a chance to make excuses, but met him with an embrace which I trust was more ardent and familiar than Scarlett's!

Ashley desperately wanted to confess. His lips trembled with yearning. I stayed his confession with a kiss.

Honesty is a blunt tool: pruning shears when sewing scissors are what's wanted! I could not let my husband confess because I could not grant him absolution!

Scarlett and Rhett arrived after Ashley's party was well under way.

(I've no doubt your brother made Scarlett "face the music. ") At our front door, I took my dear friend's faithless arm and smiled at her for all the world to see.

Our guests that night included prominent men, a few so prominent (and distracted), nobody'd told them about Ashley’s fall from grace. Generous spirits accepted my faith in my husband and my friend Cynics thought me a booby and snickered covertly.

But scandal was stopped dead at my reputation.

That night, after our guests went home, Ashley proved in the most primitive, convincing fashion that he was mine and mine alone.

Ashley and Melly Wilkes were like newlyweds. We conversed about books and art and music — never a word about politics or commerce — but our nights were so voluptuous, I blush to remember them! We never discussed what might come of our concupiscence. Perhaps we dreamed that after Beau's difficult delivery, I could not conceive again.

Since I cannot believe God can be heartless, I must believe He knows best, and so I am come to childbed.

If I survive, it is God's will. If I do not, I pray my baby will live. She is so clever and vigorous, and she so wants to live. I say "she" because I am already close to her, closer than I could be to any male child. I confide in her.

I have told her how her father was shaped for a finer world than the rough-and- tumble one we inhabit. I urge my daughter to make her world one where gentle souls like Ashley may live in honor and peace.

Rosemary, it must be possible! We born in the nineteenth century stand at the gates of Paradise, where there will be no more wars and everyone will be happy and good!

What will my daughter know of our world? If life before the War seems remote to me, how will it seem to her? Will we Confederates become sentimental ghosts? Our passions, confusions, and desires reduced to a distant idyll of faithful darkies, white columned plantations, handsome Masters and Mistresses whose manners are as impeccable as their clothing? Oh Rosemary, our lives have been severed into a "before" that grows more remote daily and a "now" that is so modern, the paint hasn't yet dried.

I am so ungrateful! The sun shines outside my window and I hear the shouts of children playing while I indulge these melancholy fantasies.

Dearest Rosemary, I have skirted the true purpose of my letter. You must come to Atlanta.

I am sensible of your responsibilities to your school but beg you to think of your brother. When Bonnie Blue was killed, I feared for Rhett's sanity.

It might so easily have been different. Little Bonnie mightn't have urged her reluctant pony to jump those hurdles. The pony might not have stumbled. Children fall from horses every day. Some of brother Charles's falls left Aunt Pittypat gasping. Most children do not die by falling from ponies.

Bonnie's death ripped her parents' hearts — as you surely understand For four days, Rhett stayed with his poor dead child in a room ablaze with lights. Rhett would not suffer Bonnie to be buried — laid forever into the dark she had always feared!

It is still hard to believe she is gone. Sometimes when I hear hoofbeats, I look to the street, expecting to see Bonnie on her fat pony beside her proud father, Rhett reining his great black horse in to accommodate his daughter's pace...

Those who say Atlanta is heartless should have seen the mourning for this child. So many came to the funeral, a hundred stood outside.

If Bonnie's death dealt your brother a fearful blow, his disintegrating marriage has undone him.

Rosemary, in his heart your brother is a lover. The shrewd businessman, the adventurer, the dandy are but costumes the lover wears.

Bonnie Blue was the last linchpin in Rhett and Scarlett's marriage.

Rhett saw Bonnie as Scarlett unspoiled a Scarlett who loved him without reservation. And Scarlett loved Bonnie as a reborn self, as an image of what she might have become if only, if only... Bonnie knew her needs, as Scarlett does not, and while Scarlett beguiles our admiration, Bonnie commanded it.

Rhett and Scarlett have always been combatative, but they were grandly, triumphantly combative — the clash of two unmastered souls. Now it is painful to be with them: such bitter, weary language; so many ancient slights reprised; hurts recollected over and over, as if the hurts were fresh and the wound still tingling.

Rosemary, your brother needs you.

I am not much traveled. Once, when I was very young Pittypat, Charles, and I traveled to Charleston. I thought it so much more sophisticated than Atlanta! We stayed in Mr. Mills's hotel (does it still exist?), and in its dining room, I was offered escargots accompanied by the device one holds them with while spearing meat from the shell I thought the device was a nutcracker and was trying with Atlantan determination to crack a snail shell when our kind waiter rescued me. "Oh no, miss. No, miss! We does things different in Charleston!”

I suspected then, and believe now, there are many things Charleston does differently — things busy Atlanta neglects or doesn't do at alt I cannot remember my father, and my mother is only a vague shape, a warmth, not unlike the warmth of baking bread. I recollect a mother's touch, so gentle, it might have been a butterfly's. When our parents died, Charles and I went to Aunt Pittypat's: two children whose guardian was little more than a child herself. Uncle Peter was the grown-up in our house!

What a happy time we had' Pittypat's silliness (which irritates adults) charmed us, and among children, Pittypat's kind heart and silly airs flowered into something like wisdom. One day, she bet that we couldn't outrun Mr. Bowen's sulky. (Mr. Bowen, our neighbor, had famous trotters.) Charles and I hid in the shrubbery until Mr. Bowen turned into our street, and we darted in front of him, running as fast as our stubby legs could while Mr. Bowen (forewarned by Aunt Pittypat) restrained his horse so we could win the race. As I recall, our prize was oatmeal cookies, two each, which were easily the best cookies I've ever had. I was a grown woman before I realized their deception — that two small children could outrun a fast trotter. Mercy!

Now, when we drive out on a Sunday afternoon, I am toted to the carriage like baggage and swaddled like an infant against the "fierce August cold. “

In the country, Ashley sighs at the ruins of every familiar plantation, their gardens as reclaimed by wildness as if the land still belonged to the Cherokees. When I tug his sleeve, Ashley reluctantly returns to the present.

We "do things different" in Atlanta these days, too. Dear Rosemary, we are nearly recovered from the War and prosper stupendously. On market days, farmers' wagons fill Peachtree and Whitehall streets from boardwalk to boardwalk. The gaslights have extended almost to Pittypat's and all the central streets are macadamed. They're building a street railway! We are readmitted to the Union, the Federal troops are out west with General Custer, and Atlanta is doing very well, thank you.

When Louis Valentine comes of age, he would have a bright future here.

Atlanta has wholeheartedly embraced the Modern Age and there will be opportunities for a young man with his Uncle Rhett's connections.

How practical I've become, when those times I recall most fondly were so impractical: Pittypat, Charles, and Melanie playing at life!

I miss Charles each and every day. In my heart, he is fixed as a young man of twenty-one, recently married to Scarlett O'Hara of Tara Plantation.

It must have been War Fever, for certainly if any two human beings were unstated to each other, it was my sweet Charles Hamilton and Scarlett O'Hara.

I solace myself with the thought that Charles died happily wed. Had he lived they would have made each other miserable.

I suppose I shall be seeing Charles soon. It will be lovely to ask what he thinks of all our goings-on.

I send you my best love.

Your Devoted Friend,

Melanie Hamilton Wilkes

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE A Deathwatch

As Melanie Wilkes was dying, Rhett Butler waited in the parlor of his mansion on Peachtree Street, listening to the clock.

It was October. A dark, drizzly afternoon.

His glass of cognac had been distilled from grapes Napoleon's armies might have passed. It tasted like ashes.

The Governor of Georgia, Senators, and United States Congressmen had been entertained in this room. The workman who'd fitted its chair rails had got more pleasure from this house than Rhett ever had.

The big house was quiet as a tomb. After Bonnie died, he'd shunned Ella and Wade. He was afraid he'd look at the living children and think, It might have been you instead of Bonnie. If only it had been you...

Mammy and Prissy took the children out of the house to play. When it rained, Ella and Wade played in the carriage house.

He'd quit going to his desk at the Farmer's and Merchants' Bank.

Yesterday — or was it the day before? — the bank's president had come, deeply worried. Although the Farmer's and Merchants' hadn't invested in the Northern Pacific, when Jay Cooke declared bankruptcy, the New York Stock Exchange collapsed. All over the country, depositors raced to their banks to withdraw their savings. Banks had failed in New York, Philadelphia, Savannah, Charleston, and Nashville. The Farmer's and Merchants' didn't have enough cash to meet the demand.

"Rhett," the president begged, "could you help?”

Rhett Butler pledged his fortune so Farmer's and Merchants' depositors could withdraw their savings in cash — every cent. Since they could, they didn't.

Rhett didn't care.

The clock chimed the hour: six funereal strokes.

A gust in the still room ruffled the hair on the nape of his neck and Rhett knew Miss Melly was dead.

Melanie Wilkes was one of the few creatures Rhett had ever known who would not be deceived.

As the brown autumnal light leaked out of the room, Rhett lit the gaslights.

Had he loved Scarlett, or had he loved what she might become? Had he deceived himself — loving the image more than the flesh and blood woman? Rhett didn't care.

If she had betrayed him again and again with Ashley Wilkes, Rhett didn't care. Ashley was free now. If she still wanted the man, she could have him.

That evening, when Rhett's wife came home from Melanie Wilkes's deathbed, she told her husband she loved him. Scarlett had never said that before, and Rhett may have believed her. But he didn't care.

Rhett Butler looked into the pale green eyes that had mesmerized him for so many years and did not give a damn.

CHAPTER FIFTY The Hill Behind Twelve Oaks

Upon Rhett's terse telegram, Rosemary resigned from the Female Seminary, packed, and gave the keys of 46 Church Street to her brother, Julian.

Louis Valentine was entranced by his first train ride. They overnighted in the Augusta railroad hotel and Big Sam met them at Jonesboro the next afternoon.

Wealthy Yankees had leased what remained of Twelve Oaks Plantation for quail hunting. Excepting oat patches grubbed here and there for game birds, the plantation had reverted to brush.

"Keep your hands inside, Young Master," Big Sam advised Louis Valentine, "else you get 'em ripped." Brambles squeezed the lane. Blackberry canes scratched the panels of their carriage.

Brick chimneys rose from the rubble of what had been Twelve Oaks' manor house. Its toppled columns were half-buried under mats of Virginia creeper. The turnaround was newly opened. The stubble crackling under their wheels hadn't seen full sun since the War. Glossy Atlanta phaetons were parked beside rickety farm wagons. Horses, several still in work hames, were hobbled here and there. Negroes gathered beneath an ancient chestnut tree that had survived Sherman's fires.

"We cain't get no closer," Big Sam advised. "Got to walk to the buryin' ground.”

"Where can I find my brother, Captain Butler?”

"Reckon he's with Mister Will. They cleared this turnaround yesterday.”

As they walked past parked carriages, an amiable face poked out a window: "Lord a mercy, ain't that you, Miss Rosemary? And there's Louis Valentine, too. Honey, don't be shy.”

"Why, Belle, hello. I didn't know you knew Melanie.”

"I thought right high of Mrs. Wilkes. I wouldn't set myself up as Mrs. Wilkes's friend, but she was awful good to me. I couldn't go to St. Philip's for the funeral, but I thought I could come here, it bein' outdoors 'n' all.”

"Melanie wouldn't have minded.”

"What Mrs. Wilkes minded wasn't what other folks mind. Mrs. Wilkes, she was a Christian!”

"Yes, she was. How I wish ..." Rosemary searched Belle's face. "Melly was very worried about my brother.”

Belle's smile vanished. "Rightly so. I've never seen Rhett so poorly. First off, he loses that dear child, and now this! What's he gonna do? Him and Miss Scarlett... he moved out on her. Just up and left. He ain't stayin' at my place, neither. I don't know where he's at!" Belle dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief. "I can't ruin my face. I got to look decent for the buryin'.”

Louis Valentine clung to Big Sam's hand. "I hates to see it like this,”

Sam told Rosemary. "I recall when Twelve Oaks was a real plantation.

Good cotton growed in these bottoms — high-dollar cotton.”

"Where can I find Captain Butler?”

"Prolly the graveyard. Day before yesterday, he come out. Been workin' since." Big Sam shook his head at this turn of events. "Cap'n Butler workin' like a nigger! You want I should carry you, Young Master?”

"I can walk by myself!" Louis Valentine asserted. "I'm seven!”

The Wilkeses' aesthetic sensibility had been expressed in every aspect of plantation life. Their parties had been famous for gaiety and the beauty of the attending belles. The wittiest bon mots had been uttered in the Wilkeses' drawing rooms, where Clayton County preoccupations with drinking, hunting, and horses got short shrift. From the veranda, beyond Twelve Oaks' lush gardens, one could just see the sparkling shallows of the Flint River.

Behind the main house, a shaded path climbed broad stones to the hilltop where, above Twelve Oaks' tall chimneys, a filigreed iron gate admitted mourners to the family graveyard. Within, huge oaks brooded over lichened headstones. Arrayed below this somber yard had been the plantation crops, manor house, gardens, and dependencies. On a clear day, everything one could see belonged to the Wilkeses; yet within these graveyard walls, all human desires, pride, wealth, and power came to their humble conclusion.

For the Wilkeses, even death had an aesthetic dimension.

Now the stone treads were askew or broken and brambles plucked at Rosemary's sleeves. The oaks were stumps; they'd fed Sherman's campfires.

Deer and feral hogs had browsed among the headstones, and the morally instructive vista had been swallowed by saplings, blackberry thickets, and strangler vines.

The two oldest graves (Robert Wilkes 1725-1809; Sarah Wilkes 1735 — 1829) were flanked by the inhabitants' descendants. Here were Melanie's parents, Colonel Stuart Hamilton (1798-1844), "Sorely missed,” and his wife, Amy, "Loving Mother.”

John A. Wilkes, Ashley's father, lay beside his wife. Charles Hamilton, C.S.A. (1840-1861), was against the wall with the cousins.

Tiny stones marked Wilkes infants' graves.

Rhett Butler slumped on a toppled headstone. When he looked up, Rosemary winced at the pain in his eyes.

"Oh Rhett, poor dear Melly.”

Rhett Butler's collar was undone and his shirt was filthy. When he brushed hair from his eyes, he streaked his forehead with red Georgia clay.

His voice was dull as a dirty stone. "All the sweet, kind souls are gone. Bonnie, Meg, John, and now Melly.”

Men were chopping brush and crying instructions as the hearse lumbered up the back slope.

"Sister," Rhett said. "No, please, don't touch me. I don't think I could bear being touched." Almost as afterthought, he added, "I've left her. I'd thought ... I'd hoped ..." He straightened his slumped shoulders. "I believed we were two of a kind. All those goddamned years ...”

"What will you do, Rhett? Where will you go?”

"Who the hell cares? There's always somewhere.”

With a moistened handkerchief, Rosemary scrubbed dirt from her brother's forehead.

Louis Valentine was investigating tombstones. "Look, Mother," he called, "he was just a baby.”

Because she couldn't bear her brother's pain, Rosemary went to her son.

She read, "Turner Wilkes, August 14-September 10, 1828. Our Heart's Desire.”

Rhett's hoarse voice intruded: "Turner was Ashley's older brother. If Turner Wilkes had had the decency to survive, Melanie would have married Turner and Ashley could have married Scarlett and I wouldn't have wasted my life.”

"Rhett, can't you forgive her?”

Her brother shook his head wearily. "Of course I forgive her. She is who she is. I can't forgive myself.”

Skidding hooves, rattling trace chains, and nervous advice announced the hearse. The glass-paneled conveyance had carried the deceased from St.

Philip's in dignity but was in peril climbing the steep, partially cleared slope. Brambles scratched the glass and undertaker's boys held back thicker branches that might have shattered it. Behind the hearse, Will Benteen led the horses of the family carriage.

At the grave site, the strong helped children and the infirm. A whitefaced Beau Wilkes clung to his father's hand. Wade Hamilton stepped around his father Charles's grave.

Little Ella clutched a bouquet of wilted chrysanthemums.

Scarlett's eyes were brimming with unshed tears.

Half Clayton County was here. The Wilkeses had been a grand family and country folk are proud of their grand families.

Faces Scarlett knew were worn with age and privation. Here was Tony Fontaine, back from Texas. And Alex Fontaine had married Sally Munroe, his brother Joe's widow. Beatrice Tarleton was whispering to Will Benteen — probably about horses. Beatrice Tarleton loved her horses more than her daughters. Randa and Camilla Tarleton had red clay on their Sunday shoes. They'd have to scrub them before they taught school tomorrow.

Betsy Tarleton hovered beside her mother to avoid her fat, ill-natured husband.

Beatrice paid Betsy no mind.

Suellen O'Hara Benteen glared at Scarlett. Will had told his wife Scarlett would be staying at Tara after the funeral.

As her marriage disintegrated month by month, week by week — sometimes Scarlett believed, hour by hour — Scarlett had found refuge investing money. She'd always been shrewd. Hadn't she built the two most profitable sawmills in Atlanta? Rhett had insisted the railroads were overextended, that more track had been built than there were passengers, or freight.

She'd show him! She'd bought Northern Pacific bonds.

After Bonnie died, Rhett had vanished into another world — a world she could not enter. Nothing she said seemed to touch him. Her sincerest promises were as ineffective as her tantrums. Rhett had looked at his wife with tired, sad eyes and abandoned her to sit beside Melanie Wilkes's deathbed.

When Scarlett's regrets and self-recriminations were too much for her, she'd gone downtown to her broker. Jay Cooke's Northern Pacific Railroad had been the sole happiness in Scarlett's life. With no effort and no suffering on her part, Northern Pacific track marched inexorably west as its bonds rose buoyantly into the skies. Natural Wonders!

After Scarlett ran through the money she'd got for her sawmills, she mortgaged the Peachtree Street mansion. In Melanie Wilkes's final days, Scarlett had borrowed against Tara. And now, Melanie was gone and Scarlett's Northern Pacific bonds were worth just as much as the trunks of Confederate currency in Tara's attic.

Scarlett would come home to Tara. Tara would provide for her.

"Dear Rosemary," she said mechanically, "so good of you to come.”

"Melanie Wilkes was ... I will miss her very much.”

"I needed her," Scarlett said, ignoring the total stranger at his sister's side. The stranger wet his lips as if he might have something to say, but of course he didn't. Neither of them had anything more to say.

The pallbearers slid the ornate casket, which Melanie Wilkes would never have chosen, from the fragile glass hearse Melanie would have thought pretentious.

As the pallbearers marched to the grave, Will Benteen eased forward on the heavy coffin's handles to bear the weight Ashley couldn't.

The rector wrapped his surplice around his neck. He began the graveside service. Wild geese honked by. A raven cawed in the brambles. Beatrice Tarleton coughed.

Scarlett closed her ears and kept her eyes focused on nothing.

Will's negroes took hold of the ropes and on Will's "Together, boys,”

they walked the casket over the grave and lowered it.

Ashley clasped his son and wept. Beau stared at his shoes.

A balloon of grief rose in Scarlett's throat. It hurt to swallow.

She trickled her bit of red clay onto Melanie Hamilton Wilkes's coffin lid and wiped her hands on her skirt.

She heard a horse crashing down the slope, and when she turned, Rhett Butler was gone from her life.

The grave at her feet might have held Scarlett's heart.