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“How now, Missy!” bawled Gerald, pouring himself a glass of port. “’Tis a fine way to act! Is it another husband you’re trying to catch and you so fresh a widow?”
“Not so loud, Pa, the servants—”
“They know already, to be sure, and everybody knows of our disgrace. And your poor mother taking to her bed with it and me not able to hold up me head. ’Tis shameful. No, Puss, you need not think to get around me with tears this time,” he said hastily and with some panic in his voice as Scarlett’s lids began to bat and her mouth to screw up. “I know you. You’d be flirting at the wake of your husband. Don’t cry. There, I’ll be saying no more tonight, for I’m going to see this fine Captain Butler who makes so light of me daughter’s reputation. But in the morning—There now, don’t cry. Twill do you no good at all, at all. ’Tis firm that I am and back to Tara you’ll be going tomorrow before you’re disgracing the lot of us again. Don’t cry, pet. Look what I’ve brought you! Isn’t that a pretty present? See, look! How could you be putting so much trouble on me, bringing me all the way up here when ’tis a busy man I am? Don’t cry!”
Melanie and Pittypat had gone to sleep hours before, but Scarlett lay awake in the warm darkness, her heart heavy and frightened in her breast. To leave Atlanta when life had just begun again and go home and face Ellen! She would rather die than face her mother. She wished she were dead, this very minute, then everyone would be sorry they had been so hateful. She turned and tossed on the hot pillow until a noise far up the quiet street reached her ears. It was an oddly familiar noise, blurred and indistinct though it was. She slipped out of bed and went to the window. The street with its over-arching trees was softly, deeply black under a dim star-studded sky. The noise came closer, the sound of wheels, the plod of a horse’s hooves and voices. And suddenly she gri
She saw the dark bulk of a buggy stop in front of the house and indistinct figures alight. Someone was with him. Two figures paused at the gate and she heard the click of the latch and Gerald’s voice came plain, “Now I’ll be giving you the ‘Lament for Robert Emmet.’ ’Tis a song you should be knowing, me lad. I’ll teach it to you.”
“I’d like to learn it,” replied his companion, a hint of buried laughter in his flat drawling voice. “But not now, Mr. O’Hara.”
“Oh, my God, it’s that hateful Butler man!” thought Scarlett, at first a
“Sing it I will and listen you will or I’ll be shooting you for the Orangeman you are.”
“Not Orangeman—Charlestonian.”
“’Tis no better. ’Tis worse. I have two sister-in-laws in Charleston and I know.”
“Is he going to tell the whole neighborhood?” thought Scarlett panic-stricken, reaching for her wrapper. But what could she do? She couldn’t go downstairs at this hour of the night and drag her father in from the street.
With no further warning, Gerald, who was hanging on the gate, threw back his head and began the “Lament,” in a roaring bass. Scarlett rested her elbows on the window sill and listened, gri
The song went on and she heard stirrings in Pittypat’s and Melly’s rooms. Poor things, they’d certainly be upset. They were not used to full-blooded males like Gerald. When the song had finished, two forms merged into one, came up the walk and mounted the steps. A discreet knock sounded at the door.
“I suppose I must go down,” thought Scarlett. “After all he’s my father and poor Pitty would die before she’d go.” Besides, she didn’t want the servants to see Gerald in his present condition. And if Peter tried to put him to bed, he might get unruly. Pork was the only one who knew how to handle him.
She pi
“Your father, I believe?” said Captain Butler, his eyes amused in his swarthy face. He took in her dishabille in one glance that seemed to penetrate through her wrapper.
“Bring him in,” she said shortly, embarrassed at her attire, infuriated at Gerald for putting her in a position where this man could laugh at her.
Rhett propelled Gerald forward. “Shall I help you take him upstairs? You ca
Her mouth fell open with horror at the audacity of his proposal. Just imagine what Pittypat and Melly cowering in their beds would think, should Captain Butler come upstairs!
“Mother of God, no! In here, in the parlor on that settee.”
“The suttee, did you say?”
“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Here. Now lay him down.”
“Shall I take off his boots?”
“No. He’s slept in them before.”
She could have bitten off her tongue for that slip, for he laughed softly as he crossed Gerald’s legs.
“Please go, now.”
He walked out into the dim hall and picked up the hat he had dropped on the doorsill.
“I will be seeing you Sunday at di
Scarlett arose at five-thirty, before the servants had come in from the back yard to start breakfast, and slipped down the steps to the quiet lower floor. Gerald was awake, sitting on the sofa, his hands gripping his bullet head as if he wished to crush it between his palms. He looked up furtively as she entered. The pain of moving his eyes was too excruciating to be borne and he groaned.
“Wurra the day!”
“It’s a fine way you’ve acted, Pa,” she began in a furious whisper. “Coming home at such an hour and waking all the neighbors with your singing.”
“I sang?”
“Sang! You woke the echoes singing the ‘Lament.’”
“’Tis nothing I’m remembering.”
“The neighbors will remember it till their dying day and so will Miss Pittypat and Melanie.”
“Mother of Sorrows,” moaned Gerald, moving a thickly furred tongue around parched lips. “’Tis little I’m remembering after the game started.”
“Game?”
“That laddybuck Butler bragged that he was the best poker player in—”
“How much did you lose?”
“Why, I won, naturally. A drink or two helps me game.”
“Look in your wallet.”
As if every movement was agony, Gerald removed his wallet from his coat and opened it. It was empty and he looked at it in forlorn bewilderment.
“Five hundred dollars,” he said. “And ’twas to buy things from the blockaders for Mrs. O’Hara, and now not even fare left to Tara.”
As she looked indignantly at the empty purse, an idea took form in Scarlett’s mind and grew swiftly.
“I’ll not be holding up my head in this town,” she began. “You’ve disgraced us all.”
“Hold your tongue, Puss. Can you not see me head is bursting?”
“Coming home drunk with a man like Captain Butler, and singing at the top of your lungs for everyone to hear and losing all that money.”
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