Where did he come from? Scarlett was startled when the manservant appeared at her side, offering her a napkin with its folds shaken out and the three-tiered stand of sandwiches. She was just about to reach out and take one when the man produced a plate, which he held near her hand for her to take.

Oh, I see, there’s a maid handing him things for him to hand to me! Mighty complicated for a fish-paste sandwich no bigger than a bite’s worth.

But she was impressed by the elegance of it all, even more impressed when the man held an elaborate silver pincer in his whitegloved hand and lifted an assortment of sandwiches onto her plate. The final touch was the small table with a lace-edged cloth on it that the second maid placed beside her knees just when she was wondering how she was going to manage, with a cup and saucer in one hand and a plate in the other.

Despite her hunger and her curiosity about the sandwiches—what kind of fancy food called for such fancy serving?—Scarlett was more interested in the silent efficient routine of the servants as first Rosemary and then Rhett were provided with plate, sandwiches, table. It was almost a disappointment when Miss Ashley was given no special treatment, only a return of the stand to the table in front of her. Fiddle-dee-dee! She’s even unfolding her napkin herself! It was a definite disappointment when she bit into the first sandwich and it was only bread and butter, even though the butter had something else in it—parsley, she thought; no, something stronger, maybe chives. She ate contentedly; all the sandwiches were good. And the cakes on the other stand looked even better.

My grief! They’re still talking about Rome! Scarlett glanced toward the servants. They were standing still as posts, along the wall behind Miss Ashley. Obviously the cakes weren’t going to be passed any time soon. For heaven’s sake, Rosemary had only eaten one half of one sandwich.

“. . . but we’re being inconsiderate,” Julia Ashley said. “Mrs. Butler, what city would you like to visit? Or do you share Rosemary’s conviction that all roads rightly lead to Rome?”

Scarlett put on her best smile. “I’m too enchanted by Charleston to even think about going any place else, Miss Ashley.”

“A graceful response,” said Julia, “although it does rather put a period to the conversation. May I offer you some tea?”

Before Scarlett could accept, Rhett spoke. “I’m afraid we have to go, Miss Julia. I haven’t gotten the woods trails in condition yet for riding in the dark, and the days are so short.”

“You could have avenues, not trails, if you’d put your men to work on the land instead of at that disgraceful phosphate mine.”

“Now, Miss Julia, I thought we’d reached a truce.”

“So we did. And I’ll honor it. Furthermore, I’ll admit that you should take care to be well home before dusk. I’ve been indulging myself with happy memories about Rome, and I haven’t watched the time. Perhaps Rosemary might stay the night with me. I’d see her to the Landing tomorrow morning.”

Oh, yes! thought Scarlett.

“Unfortunately, that won’t do,” Rhett said. “I might have to go out tonight, and I don’t want Scarlett at the house with no one she knows except her Georgia maid.”

“I don’t mind, Rhett,” Scarlett said loudly, “truly I don’t. Do you think I’m some kind of sissy who’s afraid of the dark?”

“You’re quite right, Rhett,” said Julia Ashley. “And you should cultivate some caution, Mrs. Butler. These are uncertain times.”

Julia’s tone was decisive. So was her abrupt movement. She stood and walked toward the door. “I’ll see you out, then. Hector will have your horses brought around.”

23

There were several large groups of angry-looking black men and one small group of black women in the horseshoe-shaped grass area behind the house at the Landing. Rhett helped Scarlett and Rosemary step down from the mounting block near the makeshift stables and held on to their elbows while the stableboy gathered the reins and led the horses away. When the boy was out of earshot, Rhett spoke with hushed urgency. “I’m going to walk you around to the front of the house. Go inside and straight upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Close the door and stay in there until I come for you. I’ll send Pansy up. Keep her with you.”

“What’s going on, Rhett?” Scarlett’s voice had a quaver in it.

“I’ll tell you later, there’s no time now. Just do as I say.” He kept hold of the two women, forcing them to match his purposeful but unhurried pace to the house and around its side. “Mist’ Butler!” shouted one of the men. A half dozen others followed him as he started to walk towards Rhett. This isn’t good, thought Scarlett, calling him Mr. Butler instead of Mr. Rhett. It’s not friendly at all, and there must be close to fifty of them.

“Stay where you are,” Rhett shouted back. “I’ll be back to talk to you as soon as I get the ladies settled.” Rosemary stumbled on a loose stone in the path and Rhett jerked her upright before she could fall. “I don’t care if your leg’s broken,” he muttered, “keep walking.”

“I’m all right,” Rosemary said. She sounds cool as ice, thought Scarlett. She despised herself for feeling so nervous. Thank goodness they were almost at the house now. Only a few more steps and they’d be around it. She was unaware that she was holding her breath until they neared the house front. When she saw the green terraces that stepped down to the butterfly lakes and the river, she let her breath out in a whoosh of release.

Then she drew it in sharply. As they turned the corner onto the brick terrace she saw ten white men sitting on it, leaning back against the house wall. They were all of them thin, lanky, their pale bare ankles showing between their clumsy heavy shoes and the bottoms of their faded overalls. Across their knees they held rifles or shotguns in a loose, accustomed grip. Battered wide-brimmed hats pulled low on their foreheads shadowed their eyes, but Scarlett knew they were looking at Rhett and his women. One of them expelled a stream of brown tobacco juice across the lawn in front of Rhett’s fine riding boots.

“You can thank God you didn’t spatter my sister, Clinch Dawkins,” Rhett said, “or I’d have had to kill you. I’ll talk to you boys in a few minutes, I’ve got other things to do right now.” He spoke easily, casually. But Scarlett could feel the tension in his hand holding her arm. She lifted her chin and walked with firm strong steps to match Rhett’s. No poor white trash was going to face Rhett down, or her either.

She blinked in the sudden darkness when she entered the house. What a stink! Her eyes adjusted rapidly and Scarlett saw the reason for the benches and spittoons in the main room downstairs. More weathered, hungry-looking poor whites were sprawled on the seats, filling every inch of space. They, too, were armed, and their hat brims made their eyes a secret. The floor was spotted with spit and pools of juice ringed the spittoons. Scarlett pulled her arm from Rhett’s hold, gathered up her skirts to the top of her ankles and walked to the staircase. Two steps up, she dropped them again, letting the train of her riding habit drag through the dust. She’d be damned if she’d treat that rabble to a look at a lady’s ankle. She mounted the rickety staircase as if she hadn’t a care in the world.


“What’s happening, Miss Scarlett? Ain’t nobody will tell me nothing!” Pansy started wailing the moment the bedroom door closed behind her.

“Hush up!” Scarlett ordered. “Do you want everybody in South Carolina to hear you?”

“I don’t want to have nothing to do with nobody in South Carolina, Miss Scarlett. I want to go back to Atlanta, to my own folks. I don’t like this place.”

“Nobody cares two pins what you like and don’t like, so you just march yourself over to that corner and sit on that stool and keep quiet. If I hear one peep out of you, I’ll . . . I’ll do something terrible.”

She looked at Rosemary. If Rhett’s sister broke down, too, she didn’t know what she’d do. Rosemary looked very pale, but she seemed composed enough. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, looking at the pattern of the coverlet as if she’d never seen one before.

Scarlett walked to the window that overlooked the back lawn. If she stayed to one side of it, no one below could see her looking out. She lifted the muslin curtain with cautious fingers and peered out. Was Rhett out there? Dear God, he was! She could just make out the top of his hat, a dark circle in the middle of a big crowd of dark heads and gesticulating dark hands. The separate groups of black men had come together in one threatening mass.

They could stomp him to death in half a minute flat, she thought, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Her hand crumpled the thin curtain in anger at her helplessness.

“Better get away from that window, Scarlett,” said Rosemary. “If Rhett starts worrying about you and me, he’ll be distracted from whatever it is he has to do.”

Scarlett whirled to the attack. “Don’t you care what’s happening?”

“I care plenty, but I don’t know what’s happening. And neither do you.”

“I know that Rhett’s about to be swamped by a bunch of raging darkies. Why don’t those trashy tobacco spitters use the guns they’re sitting around with?”

“Then we’d really be in a fix. I know some of the black men, they work at the phosphate mine. They don’t want anything to happen to Rhett or they’d lose their jobs. Besides, plenty of them are Butler people. They belong here. It’s the whites I’m scared of. I expect Rhett is, too.”

“Rhett’s not scared of anything!”

“Of course he is. He’d be a fool if he wasn’t. I’m plenty scared and so are you.”

“I am not!”

“Then you’re a fool.”

Scarlett’s jaw dropped. The whiplash in Rosemary’s voice shocked her more than the insult. Why, she sounds just like Julia Ashley. A half hour with that old she-dragon and Rosemary’s turned into a monster.

She turned hurriedly to the window again. It was beginning to get dark. What was happening?

She couldn’t see a thing. Only dark shapes on the dark ground. Was Rhett one of them? She couldn’t tell. She put her ear against the windowpane and strained to hear. The only sound was a muffled whimpering from Pansy.

If I don’t do something I’ll go mad, she thought, and she began to pace back and forth across the small room. “Why does a big plantation like this have such cramped little bedrooms?” she complained. “You could fit two rooms like this into any one of the rooms at Tara.”

“Do you really want to know? Then sit down. There’s a rocker over by the other window. You can rock instead of walking. I’ll light the lamp and I’ll tell you all about Dunmore Landing if you’d like to hear.”

“I can’t bear to sit still! I’m going down there and find out what’s going on.” Scarlett groped in the darkness for the doorknob.

“If you do, he’ll never forgive you,” said Rosemary.

Scarlett’s hand fell to her side.

The match striking was as loud as a pistol shot. Scarlett felt the nerves jump under her skin. Then she turned, surprised to see that Rosemary looked just the same as always. She was in the same place, too, sitting on the edge of the bed. The kerosene lamp made the random colors of the coverlet look very bright. Scarlett hesitated for a moment. Then she walked to the rocking chair and plopped down into it.

“All right. Tell me about Dunmore Landing.” She began to rock with an angry push of her feet. The chair squeaked as Rosemary talked about the plantation that meant so much to her. Scarlett rocked with vicious pleasure.

The house they were in, Rosemary began, had small bedrooms because it was built as quarters for bachelor guests only. Above the floor they were on was another floor of small rooms for the guests’ manservants. The rooms downstairs where Rhett’s office and the dining room were now had been used as guest rooms also—a place for late-night toddies and card games and sociability. “All the chairs were red leather,” Rosemary said softly. “I used to love to go in there and sniff the leather and whiskey and cigar smoke smell when all the men were out hunting.

“The Landing’s named after the place the Butlers lived before our great-great-grandfather left England for Barbados. Our great-grandfather came to Charleston from there around a hundred and fifty years ago. He built the Landing and put in the gardens. His wife’s name before she married great-grandfather was Sophia Rosemary Ross. That’s where Ross and I get our names from.”