Chapter VI

They crossed the river and the carriage mounted the hill. Even before Twelve Oaks came into view Scarlett saw smoke and smelled burning logs and roasting pork and mutton.

Scarlett loved Twelve Oaks even more than Tara, for it had a dignity that Gerald’s house did not possess.

The driveway was full of horses and carriages and guests alighting and calling greetings to friends. The wide hall which ran from front to back of the house was full of people, and Scarlett saw girls in crinolines, bright as butterflies, going up and coming down the stairs from the second fl oor, arms about each other’s waists, laughing and calling to young men in the hall below them.

Through the open French windows, she saw the older women seated in the drawing room, in dark silks fanning themselves and talking of babies and sicknesses and who had married whom and why.

The sunny front veranda was filled with guests. Yes, the whole County was here, thought Scarlett.

On the porch steps stood John Wilkes, silver-haired, radiating the quiet charm and hospitality. Beside him Honey Wilkes fidgeted and giggled as she called greetings to the arriving guests. Her sister India was nowhere to be seen, but Scarlett knew she probably was in the kitchen giving final instructions to the servants. Poor India, thought Scarlett, she’s had so much trouble keeping house since her mother died.

Frank Kennedy was hurrying to the carriage to assist Suellen. He might own more land than anyone in the County and might have a very kind heart, but he was forty. However, remembering her plan, Scarlett cast such a smile of greeting at him that he stopped short, his arm outheld to Suellen.

Scarlett’s eyes searched the crowd for Ashley. Where was he? And Melanie and Charles?

As she chattered and laughed, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in an impertinent way. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing white teeth below a black mustache. He was dark of face. There was a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was a look of good blood in his dark face.

She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called: “Rhett! Rhett Butler! Come here!”

Rhett Butler? The name had a familiar sound, somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and she dismissed the thought.

“I must run upstairs and smooth my hair,” she told Stuart and Brent, who were trying to get her cornered from the crowd.

Scarlett started up the wide stairs. As she did, a shy voice behind her called her name and, turning, she saw Charles Hamilton. He was a nice-looking boy with soft brown curls and deep brown eyes. A faint blush went over his face for he was timid with girls.

“Why, Charles Hamilton, you handsome old thing, you! I’ll bet you came all the way down here from Atlanta just to break my poor heart!”

Charles almost stuttered, holding her warm little hands in his and looking into the dancing green eyes. This was the way girls talked to other boys but never to him. They always treated him like a younger brother. Even with Honey, who he was going to marry when he came into his property next fall, he was shy and silent. And here was Scarlett O’Hara teasing him about breaking her heart!

“Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want to eat barbecue with you. And don’t you go off flirting with other girls, because I’m mighty jealous,” came the incredible words from red lips with a dimple on each side.

Tapping him lightly on the arm with her folded fan, she turned to start up the stairs and her eyes again fell on the man called Rhett Butler who stood alone a few feet away from Charles. Evidently he had overheard the whole conversation, for he grinned up at her.

In the bedroom, she found Cathleen Calvert standing before the mirror and biting her lips to make them look redder.

“Cathleen,” said Scarlett, “who is that nasty man downstairs named Butler?”

“My dear, he isn’t received!”

Scarlett digested this in silence, for she had never before been under the same roof with anyone who was not received. It was very exciting.

“What did he do?”

“Oh, Scarlett, he has the most terrible reputation. His name is Rhett Butler and he’s from Charleston and his folks are some of the nicest people there, but they won’t even speak to him. He was expelled from West Point. Imagine! And then there was that business about the girl he didn’t marry.”

“Do tell me!”

“Darling, don’t you know anything? Well, this Mr. Butler took a Charleston girl out buggy riding. And, my dear, they stayed out nearly all night and walked home finally, saying the horse had run away and they had gotten lost in the woods. And he refused to marry her the next day!”

“Oh,” said Scarlett.

“He said he hadn’t – er – done anything to her and he didn’t see why he should marry her. And, of course, her brother called him out, and Mr. Butler said he’d rather be shot than marry a stupid fool. And so they fought a duel and Mr. Butler shot the girl’s brother and he died, and Mr. Butler had to leave Charleston and now nobody receives him,” finished Cathleen triumphantly.

Scarlett sat on a high ottoman, under the shade of a huge oak in the back of the house. She had chosen to sit apart so she could gather about her as many men as possible.

She had never been more miserable in her life, for her plans of last night had failed utterly so far as Ashley was concerned. He had made no attempt to join the circle about her, in fact she had not had a word alone with him since arriving, or even spoken to him since their first greeting. He welcomed her when she came into the back garden, but Melanie had been on his arm then, Melanie who hardly came up to his shoulder.

She had smiled when she greeted Scarlett and told her how pretty her green dress was. Since then, Ashley had sat on a stool at Melanie’s feet and talked quietly with her, smiling the slow smile that Scarlett loved.

Scarlett tried to keep her eyes from these two but could not, and after each glance she redoubled her flirting with her cavaliers. But Ashley did not seem to notice her at all. He only looked up at Melanie and talked on, and Melanie looked down at him with an expression that she belonged to him.

So, Scarlett was miserable.

As her eyes wandered from Melanie, she caught the gaze of Rhett Butler, who was not mixing with the crowd but standing apart talking to John Wilkes. He had been watching her and when she looked at him he laughed outright. Scarlett had an uneasy feeling that this man who was not received was the only one present who knew what lay behind her wild gaiety and found that amusing. She could have clawed him with pleasure.

“If I can just live through this barbecue till this afternoon,” she thought, “all the girls will go upstairs to take naps to be fresh for tonight and I’ll stay downstairs and get to talk to Ashley. Surely he must have noticed how popular I am.” She had another hope: “Of course, he has to be attentive to Melanie because, after all, she is his cousin and she isn’t popular at all, and if he didn’t look out for her she’d just be a wallflower.”

Charles Hamilton was now firmly planted on her right. He held her fan in one hand and his untouched plate of barbecue in the other and stubbornly refused to meet the eyes of Honey. Scarlett took new courage and redoubled her efforts in the direction of Charles. It was a wonderful day for Charles, a dream day, and he had fallen in love with Scarlett with no effort at all.

When the last forkful of pork and chicken and mutton had been eaten, Scarlett hoped the time had come when India would rise and suggest that the ladies retire to the house. The barbecue was over and all were glad to have a rest while sun was at its height.

Conversation was dying out when everyone heard Gerald’s voice. Standing some little distance away from the barbecue tables, he was at the peak of an argument with John Wilkes.

“Pray for a peaceable settlement with the Yankees after we’ve fired on them at Fort Sumter? The South should show by arms that she cannot be insulted and that she is not leaving the Union by the Union’s kindness but by her own strength!”

“Oh, my God!” thought Scarlett. “He’s done it! Now, we’ll all sit here till midnight.”

In an instant, something electric went through the air. The men sprang from benches and chairs, voices raised to be heard above other voices. There had been no talk of politics or war all during the morning, because of Mr. Wilkes’ request that the ladies should not be bored. But now Gerald had bawled the words “Fort Sumter,” and every man forgot his host’s request.

“Of course we’ll fight —”

“Yankee thieves —”

“We could lick them in a month —”

“Why, one Southerner can lick twenty Yankees —”

“Teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget —”

“No, look how Mr. Lincoln insulted our Commissioners!”

“They want war; we’ll make them sick of war —”

And above all the voices, Gerald’s boomed. All Scarlett could hear was “States’ rights, by God!” shouted over and over. Gerald was having an excellent time, but not his daughter.

Secession, war – these words had become boring to Scarlett, but now she hated the sound of them, for they meant that the men would stand there for hours and she would have no chance to corner Ashley. Of course there would be no war and the men all knew it. They just loved to talk and hear themselves talk.

Charles Hamilton, finding himself alone with Scarlett, leaned closer and whispered a confession.

“Miss O’Hara – I – I had already decided that if we did fight, I’d go over to South Carolina and join a troop there.”

She could think of nothing to say and so merely looked at him, wondering why men were such fools as to think women interested in such matters.

“If I went – would – would you be sorry, Miss O’Hara?”

“I should cry into my pillow every night,” said Scarlett, meaning to be joking, but he took the statement at face value^[19] and went red with pleasure.

“Would you pray for me?”

“What a fool!” thought Scarlett.

“Would you?”

“Oh – yes, indeed, Mr. Hamilton. Three Rosaries a night, at least!”

“Miss O’Hara – I must tell you something. I – I love you!”

“Um?” said Scarlett absently, trying to peer through the crowd of men to where Ashley still sat talking at Melanie’s feet.

“Yes!” whispered Charles. “I love you! You are the most – the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known and the sweetest and the kindest and I love you with all my heart. I cannot hope that you could love anyone like me but, my dear Miss O’Hara, I will do anything in the world to make you love me. I will —”

Charles stopped, for he couldn’t think of anything difficult enough to really prove his love to Scarlett, so he said simply: “I want to marry you.”

Scarlett came back to earth at the sound of the word “marry.” She had been thinking of marriage and of Ashley, and she looked at Charles with irritation. She was used to men asking her to marry them, men much more attractive than Charles Hamilton. She only saw a boy of twenty, red as a beet and looking very silly. She wished that she could tell him how silly he looked. But automatically, the words Ellen had taught her to say rose to her lips and she murmured: “Mr. Hamilton, this is all so sudden that I do not know what to say.”

And Charles swallowed the bait^[20] eagerly: “I would wait forever! Please, Miss O’Hara, tell me that I may hope!”

Scarlett could hear Ashley and Melanie discussing Mr. Thackeray’s and Mr. Dickens’s works and it was so boring that the prospect looked bright to Scarlett and she turned beaming eyes on Charles and smiled.

“Ashley, you have not favored us with your opinion,” said Jim Tarleton, turning from the group of shouting men. There was no one there so handsome, thought Scarlett. Even the older men stopped to listen to his words.

“Why, gentlemen, if Georgia fights, I’ll go with her. Why else would I have joined the Troop?” he said. “But, like Father, I hope the Yankees will let us go in peace and that there will be no fighting.”

Of all the group there was only one who seemed calm. Scarlett’s eyes turned to Rhett Butler, who leaned against a tree, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. He stood alone and had uttered no word as the conversation grew hotter. There was contempt in his black eyes – contempt, as if he listened to the braggings of children. He listened quietly until Stuart Tarleton repeated: “Why, we could lick them in a month! A month – why, one battle —”

“Gentlemen,” said Rhett Butler, not moving from his position against the tree or taking his hands from his pockets, “may I say a word?”

The group turned toward him.

“Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there’s not a cannon factory south of the Mason-Dixon Line? Or how few iron foundries there are in the South? Or woolen mills or cotton factories? Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad?”

“The trouble with most of us Southerners,” continued Rhett Butler, “is that we either don’t travel enough or we don’t profit enough by our travels. Now, of course, all you gentlemen are well traveled. But what have you seen? You’ve seen the hotels and the museums and the balls and the gambling houses. And you’ve come home believing that there’s no place like the South. As for me, I was Charleston born, but I have spent the last few years in the North. I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who’d be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines – all the things we haven’t got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They’d lick us in a month.”

For a tense moment, there was silence.

“Sir,” said Stuart Tarleton heavily, “what do you mean?”

Rhett looked at him with polite but mocking eyes.

“I mean,” he answered, “what Napoleon – perhaps you’ve heard of him? – remarked once, ‘God is on the side of the strongest battalion!’” and, turning to John Wilkes, he said with courtesy: “You promised to show me your library, sir. I fear I must go back to Jonesboro early this afternoon where a bit of business calls me.”

He faced the crowd, clicked his heels together and bowed like a dancing master. Then he walked across the lawn with John Wilkes, his black head in the air, and the sound of his laughter floated back to the group.

There was a startled silence and then the buzzing broke out again.

Ashley went over to where Scarlett and Charles sat, a thoughtful and amused smile on his face.

“Arrogant devil, isn’t he?” he observed, looking after Butler. “He looks like one of the Borgias^[21].”

Scarlett thought quickly but could remember no family in the County or Atlanta or Savannah by that name.

“I don’t know them. Is he kin to them? Who are they?”

An odd look came over Charles’ face, shame struggling with love. Love triumphed as he realized that it was enough for a girl to be sweet and beautiful, without having an education and he made swift answer: “The Borgias were Italians.”

“Oh,” said Scarlett, losing interest, “foreigners.”

She turned her prettiest smile on Ashley, but for some reason he was not looking at her. He was looking at Charles, and there was understanding in his face and a little pity.

Scarlett stood on the landing and looked over the banisters into the hall below. It was empty. From the bedrooms on the floor above came low voices, laughter and, “Now, you didn’t, really!” and “What did he say then?” From the window on the landing, she could see the group of men, drinking from tall glasses, and she knew they would remain there until late afternoon. Ashley was not among them. Then she listened and heard his voice. He was still in the front driveway saying good-by to leaving matrons and children.

Her heart in her throat, she went swiftly down the stairs. What if she should meet Mr. Wilkes? What excuse could she give for walking about the house when all the other girls were getting their beauty naps? Well, that had to be risked.

Across the wide hall was the open door of the library and she entered it noiselessly. She could wait there until Ashley finished his adieux and then call to him when he came into the house.