Scarlett (55 page)

S
carlett bore her aunts’ tight-lipped disapproval with easy disregard. Even being called on the carpet by her grandfather failed to upset her. She remembered Maureen O’Hara’s off-handed dismissal of him. Old loo-la, she thought, and giggled internally. It made her brave and impertinent enough to sashay over to his bed and kiss his cheek after he dismissed her. “Good night, Grandfather,” she said cheerfully.

“Old loo-la,” she whispered when she was safely in the hall. She was laughing when she joined her aunts at table. Her supper was brought promptly. The plate was covered with a brightly shining silver dish cover to keep the food hot. Scarlett was sure it was newly polished. This house could run really properly, she thought, if it just had someone to keep the servants in line. Grandfather lets them get away with murder. Old loo-la.

“What do you find so amusing, Scarlett?” Pauline’s tone was icy.

“Nothing, Aunt Pauline.” Scarlett looked down at the mountain of food revealed when Jerome ceremoniously lifted the silver cover. She laughed aloud. For once in her life she wasn’t hungry, not after the feast at the O’Haras’. And there was enough food in front of her to feed a half dozen people. She must have put the fear of God into the kitchen.

*   *   *

The following morning at Ash Wednesday Mass Scarlett took her place beside Eulalie in the pew favored by the aunts. It was genteelly unobtrusive, entered from a side aisle and located well towards the back. Her knees had just begun to hurt from kneeling on the cold floor when she saw her cousins enter the church. They walked—of course, thought Scarlett—straight up the center aisle to almost the front, where they took up two full pews. What very large people they are, and so full of life. And color. Jamie’s sons’ heads look like warm fires in the light from the red stained glass, and not even their hats can hide the bright hair on Maureen and the girls. Scarlett was so engrossed in admiration and memories of the birthday party that she almost missed the arrival of the nuns from the convent. After she’d hurried her aunts to get to church early, too. She wanted to make sure that the Mother Superior from Charleston was still at hand in Savannah.

Yes, there she was. Scarlett ignored Eulalie’s frantic whispers ordering her to turn back around and face the altar. She studied the nun’s serene expression as she walked past. Today the Mother Superior would see her. Scarlett was determined. She spent her time during Mass daydreaming about the party she’d give after she restored Tara to all its former beauty. There’d be music and dancing, just like last night, and it would go on and on for days and days.

“Scarlett!” Eulalie hissed. “Stop humming like that.”

Scarlett smiled into her missal. She hadn’t realized she was humming. She had to admit that “Peg in a Low Back’d Car” wasn’t exactly church music.

“I don’t believe it!” Scarlett said. Her pale eyes were bewildered and hurt beneath her smudged forehead, and her fingers were closed like claws on the rosary she’d borrowed from Eulalie.

The elderly nun repeated her message with emotion-free patience. “The Mother Superior will be in retreat all day, in prayer and fasting.” She took pity on Scarlett and added an explanation. “This is Ash Wednesday.”

“I know it’s Ash Wednesday,” Scarlett almost shouted. Then she curbed her tongue. “Please say that I am very disappointed,” she said softly, “and I’ll come back tomorrow.”

As soon as she reached the Robillard house she washed her face.

Eulalie and Pauline were visibly shocked when she came downstairs and joined them in the drawing room, but neither of them said anything. Silence was the only weapon they felt it safe to use when Scarlett was in a temper. But when she announced that she was going to order breakfast, Pauline spoke up. “You’ll regret that before the day is out, Scarlett.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Scarlett answered. Her jaw was set.

It sagged when Pauline explained. Scarlett’s reintroduction to religion was so recent that she thought fasting meant simply having fish on Fridays instead of meat. She liked fish and had never objected to the rule. But what Pauline told her was objectionable in the extreme.

Only one meal a day during the forty days of Lent, and no meat at that meal. Sundays were the exception. Still no meat, but three meals were allowed.

“I don’t believe it!” Scarlett exclaimed for the second time within an hour. “We never did that at home.”

“You were children,” said Pauline, “but I’m sure your mother fasted as she should. I cannot understand why she didn’t introduce you to Lenten observance when you passed childhood, but then she was isolated out in the country without a priest’s guidance, and there was Mr. O’Hara’s influence to offset…” Her voice trailed off.

Scarlett’s eyes lit for battle. “And just what do you mean by ‘Mr. O’Hara’s influence,’ I’d like to know?”

Pauline dropped her gaze. “Everyone knows that the Irish take certain freedoms with the laws of the Church. You can’t really blame them, poor illiterate nation that they are.” She crossed herself piously.

Scarlett stamped her foot. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to such high and mighty French snobbery. My Pa was never anything but a good man, and his ‘influence’ was kindness and generosity, something you don’t know anything about. Furthermore, I’ll have you know, I spent all afternoon yesterday with his kin, and they’re fine people, every one of them. I’d a sight rather be influenced by them than by your whey-faced religious prissiness.”

Eulalie burst into tears. Scarlett scowled at her. Now she’ll sniff that sniff of hers for hours, I reckon. I can’t bear it.

Pauline sobbed loudly. Scarlett turned, staring. Pauline never wept.

Scarlett looked helplessly at the two bent gray heads and hunched shoulders, Pauline’s so thin and fragile looking.

My grief! She walked over to Pauline and touched her aunt’s knobby back. “I’m sorry, Auntie. I didn’t mean what I said.”

When peace had been restored, Eulalie suggested that Scarlett join her and Pauline for their walk around the square. “Sister and I always find that a constitutional is a great restorative,” she said brightly. Then her mouth quivered pathetically. “It keeps one’s mind off food, too.”

Scarlett agreed at once. She had to get out of the house. She was convinced she could smell bacon frying in the kitchen. She walked with her aunts around the square of green in front of the house, then the short distance to the next square, around it, then to the next square, and the next and the next. By the time they returned to the house she was dragging her feet almost as much as Eulalie was, and she was positive that she’d walked through or around every single one of the twenty-some squares that dotted Savannah and gave it its claim to unique charm. She was also positive that she was half-starved to death and bored to screaming-point. But at least it was time for dinner… She couldn’t remember ever tasting fish that was quite so delicious.

What a relief! Scarlett thought when Eulalie and Pauline went upstairs for their after-dinner naps. A little of their reminiscences of Savannah goes a long way. A lot of it could drive a person to murder. She wandered restlessly through the big house picking up bits of china and silver from tables and putting them back without really seeing them.

Why was the Mother Superior being so difficult? Why wouldn’t she talk to her at least? Why on earth would a woman like that have to spend a whole day in retreat, even a holy day like Ash Wednesday? Surely a Mother Superior was already as good as a person could be. Why did she need to spend a day in prayer and fasting?

Fasting! Scarlett ran back to the drawing room to look at the tall clock. It couldn’t be only four o’clock. Not even. It was seven minutes to four. And there’d be nothing at all to eat until dinnertime tomorrow. No, it wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense.

Scarlett walked to the bell pull and jerked it four times. “Go put your coat on,” she told Pansy when the girl came running. “We’re going out.”

“Miss Scarlett, how come we going to the bakery? Cook, she say bakery stuff ain’t fit to eat. She does all the baking her own self.”

“I don’t care what Cook says. And if you tell one single soul we’ve been here, I’ll skin you alive.”

Scarlett ate two cookies and a dinner roll in the store. She carried two sacks of baked goods home and up to her room, hiding them under her cape.

A telegram had been placed neatly in the center of her bureau. Scarlett dropped the sacks of breads and cookies on the floor and ran to get it.

“Henry Hamilton,” it said as signature. Damn! She’d thought it was from Rhett, begging her to come home or telling her that he was on his way to fetch her. She crumpled the flimsy paper angrily in her fist.

Then she smoothed it out. Better see what Uncle Henry had to say. As she read the message, Scarlett began to smile.

YOUR TELEGRAM RECEIVED STOP ALSO LARGE BANK DRAFT FROM YOUR HUSBAND STOP WHAT FOOLISHNESS IS THIS QUESTION MARK RHETT ASKED ME TO NOTIFY HIM YOUR WHEREABOUTS STOP LETTER FOLLOWS STOP HENRY HAMILTON

So Rhett was looking for her. Just what she’d expected. Hah! She’d been so right to come to Savannah. She hoped Uncle Henry had had the sense to tell Rhett right away and by telegram, not letter. Why, he might be reading his right this minute, just like she was reading hers.

Scarlett hummed a waltz tune and danced around the room holding the telegram against her heart. He might even be on his way now. The train from Charleston arrived just about this time of day. She ran to the mirror to smooth her hair and pinch color into her cheeks. Should she change her dress? No, Rhett would notice, and it would make him think she wasn’t doing anything except wait for him. She rubbed toilet water on her throat and temples. There. She was ready. Her eyes, she saw, were glowing green like a prowling cat’s. She’d have to remember to drop her lashes over them. She took a stool to the window, seated herself where she’d be hidden by the curtain but still able to see out.

An hour later, Rhett hadn’t come. Scarlett’s small white teeth tore at a roll from the bakery bag. What a bother this Lent business was! Imagine having to hide in her room and eat rolls without even any butter to put on them. She was in a very bad mood when she went downstairs.

And there was Jerome with her grandfather’s supper tray! It was almost enough to make her turn Huguenot or Presbyterian like the old man.

Scarlett stopped him in the hall. “This food looks terrible,” she said. “Take it back and put big lumps of butter on the mashed potatoes. Put a thick slice of ham on the plate, too; I know you’ve got a ham down there, I saw it hanging in the larder. And add a pitcher of cream to pour on that pudding. A little bowl of strawberry jam, too.”

“Mr. Robillard, he can’t chew no ham. And his doctor say he’s not supposed to eat sweets, nor cream and butter neither.”

“The doctor doesn’t want him to starve to death, either. Now do what I say.”

Scarlett looked angrily at Jerome’s stiff back until he disappeared down the stairs. “Nobody should have to go hungry,” she said. “Not ever.” Her mood changed abruptly and she giggled. “Not even an old loo-la.”

F
ortified by her rolls, Scarlett was cheerfully singing under her breath when she went downstairs Thursday. She found her aunts in a nervous frenzy of preparation for her grandfather’s birthday dinner. While Eulalie wrestled with branches of dark green magnolia leaves for arrangements on the sideboard and mantel, Pauline was going through stacks of heavy linen tablecloths and napkins, trying to find the ones she remembered as her father’s favorite.

“What difference does it make?” Scarlett asked impatiently. Talk about a tempest in a teapot! Grandfather wouldn’t even see the dinning room table from his room. “Just pick the one that shows the darning least.”

Eulalie dropped an armload of rattling leaves. “I didn’t hear you come in, Scarlett. Good morning.”

Pauline nodded coldly. She had forgiven Scarlett for her insults, as a good Christian woman should, but in all likelihood she’d never forget them. “There are no darns in Mère’s linens, Scarlett,” she said. “They’re all in perfect condition.”

Scarlett looked at the stacks that covered the long table and remembered the worn, mended cloths that her aunts had in Charleston. If it was up to her, she’d pack up all this stuff and take it back to Charleston when they left on Saturday. Grandfather wouldn’t miss it, and the aunts could use it. I’ll never in my life be as afraid of anybody as they are of that old tyrant. But if I said what I think, Aunt Eulalie would start to sniffle, and Aunt Pauline would lecture me for an hour about duty to my elders. “I have to go buy a present for him,” she said aloud. “Is there any shopping you want me to do for you?”

And don’t dare, she said silently, offer to come with me. I’ve got to go to the convent to see the Mother Superior. She can’t still be in retreat. If I have to, I’ll stand by the gate and grab her when she comes out. I’m almighty tired of being turned away.

They were much too busy, her aunts said, to go shopping, and they were astonished that Scarlett had not yet selected and wrapped a gift for her grandfather. Scarlett left before they could describe the extent of their busyness and depth of their astonishment. “Old loo-las,” she said under her breath. She wasn’t at all sure what the Irish phrase meant, but the sound of it was enough to make her smile.