Scarlett (68 page)

“You’re just not taken with the American New-Rich, Scarlett darling,” Colum soothed. “You’re a grand lady, that’s why.” It was exactly the right thing for him to say.

A grand lady was what she had to be after this vacation was over. She’d have this final fling of freedom and then she’d go to Charleston, put on her drab clothes and company manners, and be a lady for the rest of her life.

At least now when Miss Eleanor and everybody else in Charleston talked about their trips to Europe before the War, she’d not feel so left out. She wouldn’t say she’d disliked it, either. Ladies didn’t say things like that. Unconsciously, Scarlett sighed.

“Ach, Scarlett darling, it can’t be as bad as all that,” Colum said. “Look at the bright side. You’re cleaning out their deep pockets at the card table.”

She laughed. It was true. She was winning a fortune—some evenings as much as thirty dollars. Wait till she told Rhett! How he’d laugh. He’d been a gambler on Mississippi riverboats for a while, after all. Come to think of it, it was a good thing, really, that there was still a week at sea. She wouldn’t have to touch a penny of Rhett’s money.

Scarlett’s attitude toward money was a complex mixture of miserliness and generosity. It had been her measure of safety for so many years that she guarded every penny of her hard-earned fortune with angry suspicion of anyone who made any real or imagined demands for a dollar of it. And yet she accepted the responsibility to support her aunts and Melanie’s family without question. She had taken care of them even when she didn’t know where she’d find the means to take care of herself. If some unforeseen calamity befell, she would continue to take care of them, even if it meant that she had to go hungry. She didn’t think about it; it was simply the way things were.

Her feelings about Rhett’s money were equally inconsistent. As his wife she spent profligately on the Peachtree Street house, with its prodigious expenses, and on her wardrobe and luxuries. But the half million he had given her was different. Inviolable. She intended to give it back to him intact when they were once again truly man and wife. He had offered it as payment for separation, and she could not accept it because she would not accept separation.

It bothered her that she’d had to take some of it out of the bank vaults to bring on the trip. Everything had happened so fast, there’d been no time to get any of her own money from Atlanta. But she’d put an IOU in the box with the remaining gold in Savannah, and she was determined to spend as little as possible of the gold coins that were now keeping her back straight and her waist small, filling the channels in her corset where steel strips had once been. It was much better to win at whist and have her own money to spend. Why, in another week, with any luck, she’d add at least another $150 to her purse.

But still, she’d be glad when the voyage was over. Even with all the sails bellied taut with wind, the
Brian Boru
was too big for her to feel the thrill she remembered from racing ahead of the storm in Charleston Harbor. And she hadn’t seen even one dolphin, despite Colum’s poetic promises.

“There they are, Scarlett darling!” Colum’s usually calm, melodious voice rose in excitement; he took Scarlett’s arm and drew her to the ship’s rail. “Our escorts are here. We’ll be seeing land soon.”

Overhead the first gulls circled the
Brian Boru
. Scarlett hugged Colum impulsively. Then again when he pointed to the sleek silvery forms on the nearby sea. There were dolphins after all.

Much later, she stood between Colum and Kathleen trying to hold her hat on her head against the attack of the strong wind. They were entering harbor under steam. Scarlett stared in astonishment at the island of rock to starboard. It seemed impossible that anything, even the towering wall of craggy stone, could withstand the crashing waves that beat against it and threw white foam high against its face. She was accustomed to the low rolling hills of Clayton County. This soaring stark cliff was the most exotic sight she’d ever seen.

“Nobody tries to live there, do they?” she asked Colum.

“No bit of earth is wasted in Ireland,” he replied. “But it takes a hardy breed to call Inishmore home.”

“Inishmore.” Scarlett repeated the beautiful strange name. It sounded like music. And like no name she’d ever heard before.

Then she was silent; so were Colum and Kathleen; each of them looked at the broad blue sparkling waters of Galway Bay with private thoughts.

Colum saw Ireland ahead and his heart swelled with love for her and pain for her sufferings. As he did many times every day, he renewed his vow to destroy the oppressors of his country and to restore her to her own people. He felt no anxiety about the weapons concealed in Scarlett’s trunks. Customs officials in Galway concentrated mainly on ships’ cargoes, making sure that duty owed to the British government was paid. They’d look at the
Brian Boru
with sneers. They always did. Successful Irish-Americans gratified their sense of superiority over both—the Irish and the Americans. Even so, it was very good fortune, Colum thought, that he’d managed to convince Scarlett to come. Her petticoats were much better for hiding guns than the dozens of American boots and calicoes he’d bought. And she might even loosen her purse strings a bit when she saw the poverty of her own people. He didn’t have high hopes; Colum was a realist, and he’d gotten Scarlett’s measure from the first. He did not like her less because she was so unthinkingly self-centered. He was a priest, and human frailty was forgivable—so long as the humans were not English. In fact, even when he was manipulating Scarlett, he was fond of her, just as he was fond of all the O’Hara children.

Kathleen held tight to the ship’s rail. I’d jump over and swim did I not anchor myself, she thought, I’m that happy to be nearing Ireland, I know I’d be faster than the ship. Home. Home. Home…

Scarlett drew in her breath with a tiny squeaking noise. There was a castle on that little low island. A castle! It couldn’t be anything else, it had tooth-like things on top. What matter that it was half-fallen-down. It was really, truly a castle, just like pictures in a child’s book. She could hardly wait to discover what this Ireland was like.

When Colum escorted her down the gangplank she realized that she had entered a completely different world. The docks were busy, like the docks in Savannah, noisy, crowded, perilous with hurrying wagons and laden men loading or unloading barrels and crates and bales. But the men were all white, and they shouted to one another in a tongue that had no meaning for her.

“It’s the Gaelic, the old Irish language,” Colum explained, “but you needn’t fret, Scarlett darling. The Gaelic’s hardly known anyplace in Ireland any more save here in the west. Everyone speaks English; you’ll have no trouble.”

As if to prove him wrong, a man spoke to him with an accent so pronounced that Scarlett didn’t realize at first that he was speaking English.

Colum laughed when she told him. “It’s a queer sound, and that’s the truth of it,” he agreed, “but it’s English for sure. English the way the English speak it, all up in their noses like they’re strangling from it. That was a sergeant of Her Majesty’s Army.”

Scarlett giggled. “I thought he was a button salesman.” The sergeant’s elaborately decorated short, tight uniform jacket was fronted with more than a dozen bars of thick gold braid between pairs or brightly polished brass buttons, it looked like fancy dress to her.

She tucked her hand in Colum’s elbow. “I’m awfully glad I came,” she said. And she was. Everything was so different, so new. No wonder people liked to travel so much.

“Our baggages will be brought to the hotel,” Colum said when he returned to the bench where he’d left Scarlett and Kathleen. “It’s all arranged. Then tomorrow we’ll be on our way to Mullingar and home.”

“I wish we could go right now,” Scarlett said hopefully. “It’s early yet, barely noon.”

“But the train left at eight, Scarlett darling. The hotel’s a fine one, with a good kitchen, too.”

“I remember,” Kathleen said. “This time I’ll do all those fancy sweets justice.” She was radiant with happiness, hardly recognizable as the girl Scarlett had known in Savannah. “Coming the other way I was too sorrowful to put food in my mouth. Oh, Scarlett, you can’t know what it is to me to have the Irish ground under my feet. I feel like getting on my knees to kiss it.”

“Come along, the two of you,” Colum said. “We’ll have competition getting a hackney, today being Saturday and Market Day.”

“ ‘Market Day?’ ” Scarlett echoed.

Kathleen clapped her hands. “Market Day in a big city like Galway! Oh, Colum, it should be something grand.”

It was beyond imagination, “grand” and exciting and foreign to Scarlett. The entire grass-covered square in front of the Railway Hotel was teeming with life, alive with color. When the hackney set them down on the hotel steps, she begged Colum to join in at once, never mind seeing their rooms or eating dinner. Kathleen echoed her. “There’s food aplenty at the stalls, Colum, and I want to take some stockings home to gift the girls. There’s none like them in America, or I would have them bought already. Brigid’s fair pining away for want of some, I know it.”

Colum grinned. “And Kathleen O’Hara’s pining a bit herself, I wouldn’t be amazed. All right, then. I’ll see to the rooms. You see to Cousin Scarlett so she doesn’t get lost. Have you any money?”

“A fistful, Colum. Jamie gave it me.”

“That’s American money, Kathleen. You can’t spend it here.”

Scarlett grabbed Colum’s arm in panic. What did he mean? Wasn’t her money any good over here?

“It’s not the same kind, is all, Scarlett darling. You’ll find English money much more diverting. I’ll do the exchanging for all of us. What would you like?”

“I have all my winnings from whist. In greenbacks.” She said the word with contempt and anger. Everybody knew that greenbacks weren’t worth the numbers written on them. She should have made the losers pay her in silver or gold. She opened her purse and took out the folded wad of five and ten and one dollar bills. “Change these if you can,” she said, handing the money to Colum. His eyebrows rose.

“So much? I’m glad you never asked me to play cards with you, Scarlett darling. You must have almost two hundred dollars here.”

“Two forty-seven.”

“Look at this, Kathleen mavourneen. You’ll never see such a fortune in one place again. Would you like to hold it?”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t dare.” She backed away, her hands behind her back, her wide eyes fixed on Scarlett.

You’d think I was green instead of the money, Scarlett thought uncomfortably. Two hundred wasn’t all that much. She’d paid practically that for her furs. Surely Jamie must clear at least two hundred a month in the store. There was no need for Kathleen to carry on so.

“Here.” Colum was holding out his hand. “Here’s a few shillings for each of you. You can shop a bit while I do the banking, then meet me at that pie stall for a bite.” He pointed toward a fluttering yellow flag in the center of the busy square.

Scarlett’s eyes followed the direction of his finger and her heart sank. The street between the hotel steps and the square was filling with slowly moving cattle. She couldn’t get across it!

“I’ll manage for the both of us,” Kathleen said. “Here’s my dollars, Colum. Come on, Scarlett, take my hand.”

The shy girl Scarlett had known in Savannah was gone. Kathleen was home. Her cheeks were glowing, and her eyes. And her smile was as bright as the sun overhead.

Scarlett tried to make an excuse, to protest, but Kathleen was having none of it. She pushed through the herd of cows pulling Scarlett behind her. In seconds they were on the grass of the square. Scarlett had no time to scream with fear in the midst of the cows or to scream out her anger at Kathleen. And once in the square, she was too fascinated to remember either fear or anger. She’d loved the markets in Charleston and Savannah for their busyness and color and array of produce. But they were nothing in comparison with Market Day in Galway.

There was something going on everywhere she looked. Men and women were bargaining, buying, selling, arguing, laughing, praising, criticizing, conferring—over sheep, chickens, roosters, eggs, cows, pigs, butter, cream, goats, donkeys. “How darling,” Scarlett said when she saw the baskets of squealing pink piglets… the tiny furry donkeys with their long, pink-lined ears… and—over and over again—the colorful clothes worn by the dozens of young women and girls. When she saw the first one, she thought the girl must be in costume; then she saw the first one, she thought the girl must be in costume; then she saw another, and another, and yet another, until she realized they were almost all dressed the same. No wonder Kathleen had been talking about stockings! Everywhere Scarlett looked she saw ankles and legs in bright stripes of blue and yellow, red and white, yellow and red, white and blue. The Galway girls wore low-cut, low-heeled black leather shoes, not boots, and their skirts were four to six inches above their ankles. What skirts, too! Full, swinging, bright as the stockings in solid reds or blues or greens or yellows. Their shirtwaists were darker shades, but still colorful, with long buttoned sleeves and crisp white linen fichus folded and pinned over the front.

“I want some stockings, too, Kathleen! And one of the skirts. And a shirtwaist and kerchief. I’ve got to have them. They’re lovely!”

Kathleen smiled with pleasure. “You like Irish clothes, then, Scarlett? I’m so glad. Your things are so elegant I thought you’d laugh at ours.”