Tapping him lightly on the arm with her folded fan, she turned to start up the stairs and her eyes again fell on the man called Rhett Butler, who stood alone a few feet away from Charles. Evidently he had overheard the whole conversation, for he grinned up at her as maliciously as a tomcat, and again his eyes went over her, in a gaze totally devoid of the deference she was accustomed to.
“God's nightgown!”said Scarlett to herself in indignation, using Gerald's favorite oath.“He looks as if—as if he knew what I looked like without myshimmy,”and, tossing her head, she went up the steps.
In the bedroom where the wraps were laid, she found Cathleen Calvert preening before the mirror and biting her lips to make them redder. There were fresh roses in her sash that matched her cheeks, and her cornflower-blue eyes were dancing with excitement.
“Cathleen,”said Scarlett, trying to pull the corsage of her dress higher,“who is that nasty man downstairs named Butler?”
“My dear, don't you know?”whispered Cathleen excitedly, a weather eye on the next room where Dilcey and the Wilkes girls'mammy were gossiping.“I can't imagine how Mr. Wilkes must feel having him here, but he was visiting Mr.Kennedy in Jonesboro—something about buying cotton—and, of course, Mr.Kennedy had to bring him along with him.He couldn't just go off and leave him.”
“What is the matter with him?”
“My dear, he isn't received!”
“Not really!”
“No.”
Scarlett digested this in silence, for she had never before been under the same roof with anyone who was not received. It was very exciting.
“What did he do?”
“Oh, Scarlett, he has the most terrible reputation. His name is Rhett Butler and he's from Charleston and his folks are some of the nicest people there, but they won't even speak to him.Caro Rhett told me about him last summer.He isn't any kin to her family, but she knows all about him, everybody does.He was expelled from West Point.Imagine!And for things too bad for Caro to know.And then there was that business about the girl he didn't marry.”
“Do tell me!”
“Darling, don't you know anything?Caro told me all about it last summer and her mama would die if she thought Caro even knew about it. Well, this Mr.Butler took a Charleston girl out buggy riding.I never did know who she was, but I've got my suspicions.She couldn't have been very nice or she wouldn't have gone out with him in the late afternoon without a chaperon.And, my dear, they stayed out nearly all night and walked home finally, saying the horse hadrun away and smashed the buggy and they had gotten lost in the woods.And guess what—”
“I can't guess. Tell me,”said Scarlett enthusiastically, hoping for the worst.
“He refused to marry her the next day!”
“Oh,”said Scarlett, her hopes dashed.
“He said he hadn't—er—done anything to her and he didn't see why he should marry her. And, of course, her brother called him out, and Mr.Butler said he'd rather be shot than marry a stupid fool.And so they fought a duel and Mr.Butler had to leave Charleston and now nobody receives him,”finished Cathleen triumphantly, and just in time, for Dilcey came back into the room to oversee the toilet of her charge.
“Did she have a baby?”whispered Scarlett in Cathleen's ear.
Cathleen shook her head violently.“But she was mined just the same,”she hissed back.
“I wish I had gotten Ashley to compromise me,”thought Scarlett suddenly.“He'd be too much of a gentleman not to marry me. But somehow, unbidden, she had a feeling of respect for Rhett Butler for refusing to marry a girl who was a fool.”
Scarlett sat on a high rosewood ottoman, under the shade of a huge oak in the rear of the house, her flounces and ruffles billowing about her and two inches of green morocco slippers—all that a lady could show and still remain a lady—peeping from beneath them. She had a scarcely touched plate in her hands and seven cavaliers about her.The barbecue had reached its peak and the warm air was full of laughter and talk, the click of silver on porcelain and the rich heavy smells of roasting meats and redolent gravies.Occasionally when the slight breeze veered, puffs of smoke from the long barbecue pits floated over the crowd and were greeted with squeals of mock dismay from the ladies and violent flappings of palmetto fans.
Most of the young ladies were seated with partners on the long benches that faced the tables, but Scarlett, realizing that a girl has only two sides and only one man can sit on each of these sides, had elected to Sit apart so she could gather about her as many men as possible.
Under the arbor sat the married women, their dark dresses decorous notes in the surrounding color and gaiety. Matrons, regardless of their ages, always grouped together apart from the bright-eyed girls, beaux and laughter, for there were no married belles in the South.From Grandma Fontaine, who was belching frankly with the privilege of her age, to seventeen-year-old Alice Munroe, struggling against the nausea of a first pregnancy, they had their heads together in the endless genealogical and obstetrical discussions that made such gatherings very pleasant and instructive affairs.
Casting contemptuous glances at them, Scarlett thought that they looked like a clump of fat crows. Married women never had any fun.It did not occur to her that if she married Ashley she would automatically be relegated to arbors and front parlors with staid matrons in dull silks, as staid and dull as they and not a part of the fun and frolicking.Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further.Besides, she was too unhappy now to pursue an abstraction.