Rhett Butler's people (12 page)

"Now Langston." Colonel Jack chuckled. "You didn't come to our humble home to possess it. Butlers grabbed Jack's good lands already, and an agriculturalist like yourself doesn't covet the poor ground I still hold.

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I know you, Langston. I've known you since you were a grasping, flint-hearted, arrogant boy. You've a proposition for Old Jack, some little

arrangement

to quell gossip and, may I suggest, improve the Ravanel fortunes to a modest degree? Have I the right of it, sir?"

Langston smiled a singularly unpleasant smile. "Your wife, Frances, was widely admired, Jack. There was no more gracious gentlewoman in the Low Country."

Jack Ravanel went white. "You will not speak of my wife, Langston. You will not sully her precious name."

Langston tapped the heaped notes. "Do I have your undivided attention? Tonight at the Jockey Club Ball, I shall announce my daughter's engagement to Mr. John Haynes. After my announcement, your son will make a public apology for any misunderstanding caused by his unseemly behavior at the racetrack this afternoon." Langston turned a cold eye on Andrew. "Perhaps you were inebriated, sir. Perhaps you were so overcome with joy on learning of my daughter's betrothal you forgot yourself." Langston shrugged. "I leave the details to you. If you cannot tell a plausible lie, I daresay your father can coach you. After I accept your apology, you will announce your engagement to Miss Charlotte Fisher."

"Sir, I would not marry that girl if every blemish on her face were worth ten thousand dollars."

"As you wish." Langston Butler waited silently while the Ravanels, father and son, uttered all the hot, helpless words they had to utter before accepting the inevitable.

In the face of her granddaughter's joy, Constance Fisher reluctantly acceded to her engagement to Andrew Ravanel.

To escape her father's house, Rosemary agreed to marry John Haynes; what Tunis had told her made living there intolerable. When she said as much, Langston replied, "I do not ask why you obey, merely that you do." When the betrothed couple met privately in Langston Butler's drawing room, John Haynes said, "Rosemary, this is more than I ever had dared to hope." He knelt before her. "Although I fear your answer, dearest, I must know. Is our marriage

your

decision?"

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Rosemary hesitated before saying, "John, I shall try."

Stolid, respectable John Haynes became a happy, grinning boy. "Well then. Dear me. Well then. Nothing fairer. Dearest Rosemary. My dearest Rosemary..."

Charlotte and Andrew were married in April, and Charlotte was, if not a beautiful bride, a radiant one. Charleston matrons clicked their tongues and hoped marriage would steady Andrew Ravanel.

Langston Butler gave a certain negro banjo player to Mr. and Mrs. Ravanel. Even Isaiah Watling hadn't been able to turn Cassius into a rice hand.

Two weeks later, when Rosemary and John Haynes stood before St. Michael's altar, John glowed with happiness. Rosemary was wan, and uttered her vows so quietly, few behind the front pews heard them.

As the couple emerged from the church, Tunis Bonneau waited at the curb, holding a roan horse by its bridle.

"My God," Rosemary said. "Tecumseh!"

"Your brother Rhett gives him to you and Mr. Haynes, Miss Rosemary," Tunis said. "He writes that he is wishin' you happiness on your wedding day."

Langston Butler turned to his new son-in-law. "Sir, I will take that animal and dispose of it."

John Haynes squeezed his bride's hand. "Thank you sir, but no. The horse is a gift from my friend and Mrs. Haynes's brother which she, and I, accept with pleasure."

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Chapter

Chapter Eight

A Patriotic Ball

Few Charlestonians believed Andrew Ravanel's racecourse kiss had been as innocent as that gentleman afterward claimed, but the compromised parties were safely married. On the strength of Andrew's new Fisher connections, Langston Butler quietly unloaded Colonel Jack's notes at fifty cents on the dollar.

Mr. and Mrs. John Haynes were seen about Charleston in a handsome blue sulky with Tecumseh in the shafts. John Haynes had paid three hundred for the rig -- on his bride's whim, it was reported.

Some said Rhett Butler had been seen in New York. An English ship captain told John Haynes his brother-in-law was speculating on the London bourse. Tunis Bonneau, who was now Haynes & Son's chief pilot, said Rhett was in New Orleans.

Although the Hayneses showed proper deference to Rosemary's parents and exchanged pleasantries after Sunday services, the younger couple retained their separate pew and Rosemary visited her mother only when her father was out of town. Mr. and Mrs. Haynes resided quietly at 46 Church Street and in due course were blessed with a daughter they christened Margaret Ann.

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Ravanel took up housekeeping in the Fishers' East Bay establishment. Charleston's moneylenders were dismayed to learn Constance Fisher would not be responsible for Ravanel debts.

Andrew Ravanel's new manservant, Cassius, accompanied Andrew everywhere, waiting outside gambling hells or saloons until all hours. Often,

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Cassius led his master's horse home at daybreak, with Andrew nodding in the saddle. When Andrew, Jamie Fisher, Henry Kershaw, and Edgar Allan Puryear went hunting, Cassius cooked their simple meals, blacked their boots, and picked lively tunes. Henry Kershaw insisted that Cassius's sojourn in Langston Butler's rice fields had improved the negro's picking. Cassius's music had become more, Henry vowed, "heartfelt."

After Grandmother Fisher deplored Andrew's habits once too often, Mr. and Mrs. Ravanel quit Charlotte's childhood home for Colonel Jack's shabby town house, where the couple abided with that gentleman and his daughter, Juliet.

In happier times, these matters might have excited greater curiosity, but these were not happy times. "Secession" -- for thirty years the firebrands' whisper -- had become a full-throated shout.

On October 16, 1859, John Brown murdered the peace. John Brown discredited peacemakers, sundered families into Unionists and Secessionists, and divided Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Baptists into Northern and Southern congregations. With a handful of men, vague plans, and a willingness to murder for principle, John Brown descended on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intending to spark a slave insurrection. Brown brought a thousand sharp steel pikes for the slaves to use on their masters.

Low Country planters had a blood fear of insurrections. French refugees from the Santa Domingue insurrection (Eulalie Ward's parents, the Robillards, among them) had arrived with dreadful stories of innocents murdered in their beds, ravished women, infants' brains dashed out against doorsills. Nat Turner's and Denmark Vesey's slave insurrections had failed, but John Brown was a white man backed and financed by white men. Some Yankees claimed the murderer was a saint.

After Brown's raid, moderates were discredited, firebrands like Langston Butler controlled the legislature, and ordinarily prudent men hung on their every word. Cathecarte Puryear was voted out of the St. Cecilia Society.

Although John Brown was captured, tried, and hanged, Low Country militias were forming before his body cooled: the Palmetto Brigade, the Charleston Rifles, the Charleston Light Horse, Hampton's Legion. British

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ships delivered rifles, cannons, and military uniforms to Charleston's wharves. Young men swore off drinking, and gambling hells fell on hard times. Cassius mastered new patriotic tunes as they were written.

The year between Brown's raid and Abraham Lincoln's election was rife with omens. Seven pilot whales stranded themselves on the sands of Sullivan's Island. Geese flew south two months earlier than usual. The rice crop was the most bountiful in living memory. Negro conjure men muttered and prophesied Armageddon. Jamie Fisher told his sister, Charlotte, he felt like a bird hypnotized by a snake.

Andrew Ravanel was elected captain of the Charleston Light Horse. When a subscription was begun to provide uniforms for the elite militia company, differences were set aside and Langston Butler made a generous contribution.

One Saturday morning in early November, Colonel Jack Ravanel was found dead on the breakwater behind Adger's Wharf. Although Tunis Bonneau's father-in-law, the Reverend William Prescott, mentioned the old sinner's demise in his Sunday sermon, Old Jack's passing went otherwise unremarked. Charleston's attention was fixed on the presidential election to be held the following Tuesday.

Of the four presidential candidates that year, only one was thought to be an outright abolitionist, and though that man received almost three million fewer votes than his rivals and not a single vote in ten Southern states, that man was elected President. Many white Southerners believed the only distinction between President Abraham Lincoln and John Brown was that John Brown was dead.

Just six weeks after Lincoln's election, the Convention of the People of South Carolina met to briefly debate, then unanimously adopt an Ordinance of Secession. Church bells pealed, militiamen marched, and bonfires roared in the streets.

The new militias drilled on the Washington Racecourse. The Charleston Light Horse wore gray pantaloons, high cordovan boots, and a short green jacket crisscrossed with gold braid. Enlisted men had gray kepis; officers wore a black planter's hat embellished with an egret's plume.

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Edgar Puryear and Henry Kershaw were elected lieutenants and Jamie Fisher was enrolled as Chief of Scouts.

Charleston's ladies turned out to admire the Light Horse's agreeably frightening drills: left hand on the reins, right on the saber, each bold rider drawing his blade in a flashing silver arc before crashing through the ranks of straw dummies. The dummies carried broomstick rifles and were dressed in Federal blue.

The ladies admired these young men who had spurned the dishonored red, white, and blue for the brave new palmetto banner.

Rosemary Haynes cheered until she was hoarse.

Andrew Ravanel was transformed. The melancholic roisterer became cheerful; the man who'd been oblivious of other's sensitivities became solicitous. As a servant of the new republic, Andrew Ravanel became a king.

Like thieves in the night, Charleston's Federal garrison withdrew itself into Fort Sumter, the powerful island fortress in the heart of Charleston harbor. Indignant Charlestonians protested this seizure of Carolina property and Mr. Lincoln was informed that any attempt to relieve or supply Fort Sumter would be severely rebuked.

When she came home to her own doorstep after a morning applauding cavalry drills, Rosemary's heart sank. She took a deep breath and comforted herself: Meg is waiting for me. Those mornings the Light Horse didn't drill, Rosemary woke with a headache and stayed in bed until noon.

Rosemary Butler Haynes knew she mustn't give in to disaffection. John Haynes was a good man. Had John Haynes ever claimed to be a horseman? On the contrary, he joked about his poor seat. If John Haynes's fingers were ink-stained, John was in trade: how could they not be stained?

Yet some mornings after her husband left for work, sitting alone, the memory of Andrew Ravanel's kiss overwhelmed her. A chasm had opened between her and Charlotte. When her old friend called at 46 Church Street, "Miss Rosemary, she ain't at home"; "Miss Rosemary, she indisposed." How could Rosemary chat with the old friend who shared Andrew's home, his life, his bright hopes, his bed?

Rosemary tried very hard to banish regrets for what her life might have been.

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Rosemary's husband brought small gifts; a silver bud vase, a rose-gold filigree brooch. Was it John's fault the vase was too fussy and the brooch didn't match anything Rosemary wore?

John never talked politics and never watched the Light Horse drills. He even defended Charleston's few remaining Unionists: "Can't we differ without impugning honest men?" Every morning excepting the Sabbath, John walked from Church Street to his office on the Haynes & Son wharf. All day, he negotiated with ship captains, shippers, consignors, and insurers. One spring evening, Rosemary happened to be at the front windows as her husband hurried up the steps of his home, a glad smile flickering on his lips. Thereafter, she avoided the front windows when John was due. Rosemary stayed in her room while John played with Meg for an hour before supper.

After supper, they heard Meg say her simple prayers and put her to bed. Then John Haynes read aloud to Rosemary from Bulwer-Lytton or some other improving novelist. "Of course, my dear, if you'd prefer something lighter? One of Mr. Scott's works?"