Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

Certainly she had never thought of the possibility that she’d show up like this, squashed amid boxes and barrels of God knows what on a scabby boat that smelled to high heaven.

Now that she was away from the city, she was more worried about Rhett’s anger than about the prowling Yankee. Suppose he just tells the boatmen to turn right around and take me back?

The boatmen dipped their oars into the green-brown water only to steer; the tide’s invisible, powerful, slow current carried them. Scarlett looked impatiently at the banks of the wide river. It didn’t seem to her that they were moving at all. Everything was the same: wide stretches of tall brown grasses that swayed slowly—oh, so slowly—in the tidal current, and behind them thick woods draped with motionless gray curtains of Spanish moss, under them the tangled growth of overgrown evergreen shrubs. It was all so silent. Why weren’t there any birds singing, for heaven’s sake? And why was it getting so dark already?

It began to rain.

Long before the oars started a steady pull toward the left bank she was soaked to the skin and shivering, miserable in body and mind. The bump of the bow against a dock jarred her from her huddled desolation. She looked up through the blur of rain on her face and saw a figure in streaming black oilskins, illuminated by a blazing torch. The face was invisible under a deep hood.

“Throw me a line.” Rhett leaned forward, one arm outstretched. “Good trip, boys?”

Scarlett pushed against the crates nearest her to stand. Her legs were too cramped to hold her, and she fell back, toppling the topmost crate with a crash.

“What the hell?” Rhett caught the noosed rope that snaked to him from the boatman and dropped the circle over a mooring post. “Toss up the stern line,” he ordered. “What’s making that racket? Are you men drunk?”

“No sir, Mister Rhett,” the boatmen chorused. It was the first time they had spoken since they had left the dock in Charleston. One of them gestured toward the two women in the stern of the barge.

“My God!” said Rhett.

“Do you feel better now?”

Rhett’s voice was carefully controlled. Scarlett nodded dumbly. She was wrapped in a blanket, wearing a coarse work shirt of Rhett’s underneath, and sitting on a stool near an open fire with her bare feet in a tub of hot water.

“How are you doing, Pansy?” Scarlett’s maid, on another stool in another blanket cocoon, grinned and allowed as how she was doing just fine excepting that she was powerful hungry.

Rhett chuckled. “And so am I. When you dry out, we’ll eat.”

Scarlett pulled the blanket more closely around her. He’s being too nice, I’ve seen him like this before, all smiles and warm as sunshine. Then it would turn out that he was really mad enough to spit nails all the time. It’s because Pansy’s here, that’s why he’s putting on this act. When she’s gone, he’ll turn on me. Maybe I can say I need her to stay with me—but for what? I’m already undressed, and I can’t put my clothes on again until they dry, and Lord knows when that will be, with the rain outside and the inside so dank. How can Rhett bear to live in this place? It’s awful!

The room they were in was lit only by the fire. It was a large square, perhaps twenty feet to a side, with a packed-earth floor and stained walls that had lost most of their plaster. It smelled of cheap whiskey and tobacco juice, with an underlay of scorched wood and fabric. The only furniture was an assortment of crude stools and benches, plus a scattering of dented metal cuspidors. The mantelpiece over the wide fireplace and the frames around the doors and windows looked like some kind of mistake. They were made of pine, beautifully carved with a delicate fretwork design and oiled to a glowing golden brown. In one corner there was a rough staircase with splintered wooden treads and a sagging, unsafe railing. Scarlett’s and Pansy’s clothes were draped over the length of it. The white petticoats billowed from time to time when a draft caught them, like ghosts lurking in deep shadows.

“Why didn’t you stay in Charleston, Scarlett?” Supper was over and Pansy had been sent to sleep with the old black woman who cooked for Rhett. Scarlett squared her shoulders.

“Your mother didn’t want to disturb you in your paradise here.” She looked around the room disdainfully. “But I believe you should know what’s going on. There’s a Yankee soldier creeping into bedrooms at night—ladies’ bedrooms—and handling them. One girl went clean out of her mind and had to be sent off.” She tried to read his face, but it was expressionless. He was looking at her, silent, as if he was waiting for something.

“Well? Don’t you care that your mother and I could be murdered in our beds, or something worse?”

Rhett’s mouth turned down in a derisive smile. “Am I hearing correctly? Maidenly timidity from the woman who drove a wagon through the entire Yankee army because it was in her way? Come, now, Scarlett. You’ve been known to tell the truth. Why did you come all this way in the rain? Were you hoping to catch me in the arms of a light o’ love? Did Henry Hamilton recommend that as a way to get me to start paying your bills again?”

“What on earth are you talking about, Rhett Butler? What has Uncle Henry got to do with anything?”

“Such convincing ignorance! I compliment you. But you can’t expect me to believe for an instant that your crafty old lawyer didn’t notify you when I cut off the money I was sending to Atlanta. I’m too fond of Henry Hamilton to credit such negligence.”

“Stopped sending the money? You can’t do that!” Scarlett’s knees turned to jelly. Rhett couldn’t mean it. What would happen to her? The house on Peachtree Street—the tons of coal it took to heat it, the servants to clean and cook and wash and keep the garden and the horses and polish the carriages, the food for all of them—why, it cost a fortune. How could Uncle Henry pay the bills? He’d use her money! No, no that couldn’t be. She’d scrabbled along with no food in her belly, broken shoes on her feet, her back breaking and her hands bleeding while she worked in the fields to keep from starving. She’d given up all her pride, turned her back on everything she’d been taught, done business with low-down people not fit to spit on, schemed and cheated, worked day and night for her money. She wouldn’t let it go, she couldn’t. It was hers. It was the only thing she had.

“You can’t take my money!” she screamed at Rhett. But it came out a cracked whisper.

He laughed. “I haven’t taken any away from you, my pet. I’ve only stopped adding to it. As long as you’re living in the house I provide in Charleston, there’s no reason for me to maintain an empty house in Atlanta. Of course, if you were to return to it, it would no longer be empty. Then I’d feel obliged to begin paying for it again.” Rhett walked over to the fireplace where he could see her face in the light of the flames. His challenging smile disappeared and his forehead creased with concern.

“You really didn’t know, did you? Hold on, Scarlett, I’ll get you a brandy. You look like you’re going to pass out.”

He had to steady her hands with his to hold the glass to her lips. She was trembling uncontrollably. When the glass was empty, he dropped it on the floor and chafed her hands until they warmed and stopped shaking.

“Now tell me, in sober truth, is there really a soldier breaking into bedrooms?”

“Rhett, you didn’t mean it, did you? You aren’t going to stop sending the money to Atlanta?”

“To hell with the money, Scarlett, I asked you a question.”

“To hell with you,” she said, “I asked you one.”

“I should have known you wouldn’t be able to think of anything else once money was mentioned. All right, I’ll send some to Henry. Now will you answer me?”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes! Yes, dammit, tomorrow. Now, once and for all, what’s this story about a Yankee soldier?”

Scarlett’s sigh of relief seemed to last forever. Then she drew breath into her lungs and told him everything she knew about the intruder.

“You say Alicia Savage saw his uniform?”

“Yes,” Scarlett answered. Then she added spitefully, “He doesn’t care how old they are. Maybe he’s raping your mother right this minute.”

Rhett’s big hands clenched. “I should strangle you, Scarlett. The world would be a better place.”

He questioned her for almost an hour, until she was drained of everything she’d heard.

“Very well,” he said then, “we’ll leave tomorrow as soon as the tide turns.” He walked to a door and threw it open. “Good,” he said, “the sky is clear. It’ll be an easy run.”

Past his silhouette Scarlett could see the night sky. There was a three-quarter moon. She stood wearily. Then she saw the mist from the river that covered the ground outside. The moonlight made it white, and for a confused moment she wondered if it had snowed. A billow of mist enveloped Rhett’s feet and ankles, then dissipated into the room. He closed the door and turned. Without the moonlight, the room seemed very dark until a match flared, illuminating Rhett’s chin and nose from below. He touched it to a lamp wick, and she could see his face. Scarlett ached with longing. He put the glass chimney on the lamp and held it high. “Come with me. There’s a bedroom upstairs where you can sleep.”

It was not nearly as primitive as the room downstairs. The tall four-post bed had a thick mattress and fat pillows and a bright woolen blanket over its crisp linen sheets. Scarlett didn’t look at the other furnishings. She let the blanket fall from her shoulders and climbed the set of steps beside the bed to burrow under the covers.

He stood over her a moment before he left the room. She listened to his footsteps. No, he wasn’t going downstairs, he’d be close by. Scarlett smiled, then slept.

The nightmare began as it had always begun—with the mist. It was years since Scarlett had dreamed it, but her unconscious mind remembered even as it created the dream, and she began to twist and thrash and whimper deep in the back of her throat, dreading what was to come. Then, again, she was running, with her straining heart pounding in her ears, running, stumbling and running, through a thick white fog that twined cold swirling tendrils around her throat and legs and arms. She was cold, as cold as death, and hungry, and terrified. It was the same, it had always been the same, and each time worse than the time before, as if the terror and hunger and cold accumulated, grew stronger.

And yet it was not the same. For in the past, she had been running and reaching for something unnamed and unknowable, and now ahead of her she could glimpse through streaks in the mist Rhett’s broad back, always moving away. And she knew that he was what she was searching for, that when she reached him the dream would lose its power and fade away, never to return. She ran and ran, but he was always far ahead, always with his back turned on her. Then the fog thickened, and he began to disappear, and she cried out to him. “Rhett . . . Rhett . . . Rhett . . . Rhett . . . Rhett . . .”

“Hush, hush now. You’re dreaming, it’s not real.”

“Rhett . . .”

“Yes, I’m here. Hush now. You’re all right.” Strong arms lifted her and held her, and she was warm and safe at last.

Scarlett half-woke with a start. There was no mist. Instead, a lamp on a table cast a glowing light and she could see Rhett’s face bent close above hers. “Oh, Rhett,” she cried. “It was so awful.”

“The old dream?”

“Yes, yes—well, almost. There was something different, I can’t remember . . . But I was cold and hungry and I couldn’t see because of the fog, and I was so frightened, Rhett, it was terrible.”

He held her close and his voice vibrated in his hard chest next to her ear. “Of course you were cold and hungry. That supper wasn’t fit to eat, and you’ve kicked off your blankets. I’ll pull them up, and you’ll sleep just fine.” He laid her down against the pillows.

“Don’t leave me. It’ll come back.”

Rhett spread the blankets up over her. “There’ll be biscuits for breakfast, and hominy, and butter enough to turn them yellow. Think about that—and country ham and fresh eggs—and you’ll sleep like a baby. You’ve always been a good feeder, Scarlett.” His voice was amused. And tired. She closed her heavy eyelids.

“Rhett?” It was a blurred, drowsy sound.

He paused in the doorway, his hand shading the lamplight. “Yes, Scarlett?”