Pauline had her by the arm, hurrying her across the street. “ ‘. . . with a banjo on my knee,” she was singing in a low off-key murmur. Scarlett allowed herself to be led like a sleepwalker. In time, she found herself standing inside a door, looking at a tall elegant woman with shining white hair crowning a lined lovely face.

“Dear Eleanor,” said Eulalie.

“You’ve brought Scarlett,” said Mrs. Butler. “My dear child,” she said to Scarlett, “you look so pale.” She put her hands lightly on Scarlett’s shoulders and bent to kiss her cheek.

Scarlett closed her eyes. The faint scent of lemon verbena surrounded her, floating gently from Eleanor Butler’s silk gown and silken hair. It was the fragrance that had always been part of Ellen O’Hara, the scent for Scarlett of comfort, of safety, of love, of life before the War.

Scarlett felt her eyes spilling uncontrollable tears.

“There, there,” Rhett’s mother said. “It’s all right, my dear. Whatever it is, it’s all right now. You’ve come home at last. I’ve been longing for you to come.” She put her arms around her daughter-in-law and held her close.

11

Eleanor Butler was a Southern lady. Her slow, soft voice and indolent, graceful movements disguised a formidable energy and efficiency. Ladies were trained from birth to be decorative, to be sympathetic and fascinated listeners, to be appealingly helpless and empty-headed and admiring. They were also trained to manage the intricate and demanding responsibilities of huge houses and large, often warring, staffs of servants—while always making it seem that the house, the garden, the kitchen, the servants ran themselves flawlessly while the lady of the house concentrated on matching colors of silk for her delicate embroidery.

When the deprivations of war reduced the staffs of thirty or forty to one or two, the demands on women increased exponentially, but the expectations remained the same. The battered houses must continue to welcome guests, shelter families, sparkle with clean windows and shining brass, and have a well-groomed, imperturbable, accomplished mistress at leisure in the drawing room. Somehow the ladies of the South did it.

Eleanor soothed Scarlett with gentle words and fragrant tea, flattered Pauline by asking her opinion of the desk recently installed in the drawing room, diverted Eulalie with a plea to taste the pound cake and judge if the extract of vanilla bean was strong enough. She also murmured to Manigo, her manservant, that her maid Celie would help him and Scarlett’s maid transfer Scarlett’s things from her aunts’ house to the big bedroom overlooking the garden where Mr. Rhett slept.

In under ten minutes, everything had been accomplished to move Scarlett without opposition, or injured feelings, or interruption to the even rhythm of the tranquil life under Eleanor Butler’s roof. Scarlett felt like a girl again, safe from all harm, sheltered by a mother’s all-powerful love.

She gazed at Eleanor through misted, admiring eyes. This was what she wanted to be, had always meant to be, a lady like her mother, like Eleanor Butler. Ellen O’Hara had instructed her to be a lady, had planned for it and wanted it. I can do it now, Scarlett told herself. I can make up for all the mistakes I made. I can make Mother proud of me.

When she was a child, Mammy had described heaven to her as a land of clouds like big feather mattresses where angels rested, amusing themselves by looking down at the goings-on below through cracks in the sky. Ever since her mother died, Scarlett had had an uncomfortable childish conviction that Ellen was watching her with unhappy concern.

I’ll make it all better now, she promised her mother. Eleanor’s affectionate welcome had, for the moment, erased all the fears and memories that filled her heart and mind when she saw the Yankee soldiers. It had even wiped out Scarlett’s unacknowledged anxiety about her decision to follow Rhett to Charleston. She felt safe and loved and invincible. She could do anything, everything. And she would. She would win Rhett’s love again. She would be the lady Ellen always meant for her to be. She would be admired and respected and adored by everyone. And she would never, ever, be lonely again.

When Pauline closed the last tiny, ivory-inlaid drawer of the rosewood desk and Eulalie hurriedly swallowed the last slice of cake, Eleanor Butler stood, pulling Scarlett up with her. “I have to pick up my boots from the cobbler this morning,” she said, “so I’ll take Scarlett along and introduce her to King Street. No woman can possibly feel at home until she knows where the shops are. Will you all join us?”

To Scarlett’s immense relief, her aunts declined. She wanted Mrs. Butler all to herself.

The walk to Charleston’s shops was pure pleasure in the warm bright winter sunlight. King Street was a revelation and a delight. Stores lined it for block after block; dry goods, hardware, boots, tobacco and cigars, hats, jewelry, china, seeds, medicines, wines, books, gloves, candies—it seemed that everything and anything could be bought on King Street. There were crowds of shoppers, too, and dozens of smart buggies and open carriages, with liveried drivers and fashionably dressed occupants. Charleston was nowhere near as dreary as she had remembered it and feared it to be. It was much bigger and busier than Atlanta. And no sign of the Panic at all.

Unfortunately, Rhett’s mother behaved as if none of the color and excitement and busyness existed. She walked past windows full of ostrich plumes and painted fans without looking at them, crossed the street without so much as a thank you to the women in the buggy that had stopped to avoid hitting her. Scarlett remembered what her aunts had told her: there wasn’t a carriage to he had in Charleston except those owned by Yankees, carpetbaggers and scallywags. She felt a rush of white-hot rage at the vultures that were fattening on the defeated South. When she followed Mrs. Butler into one of the boot shops it did her heart good to see the proprietor turn over his richly dressed customer to a young assistant so that he could hurry forward to Rhett’s mother. It was a pleasure to be with a member of the Old Guard in Charleston. She wished fervently that Mrs. Merriwether or Mrs. Elsing were there to see her.

“I left some boots to be resoled, Mr. Braxton,” Eleanor said, “and I also want my daughter-in-law to know where to come for the finest footwear and the most agreeable service. Scarlett, dear, Mr. Braxton will take the same good care of you that he has of me for all these years.”

“It will be my privilege, ma’am.” Mr. Braxton bowed elegantly.

“How do you do, Mr. Braxton, and I thank you,” Scarlett replied, with great refinement. “I believe I’ll get a pair of boots today myself.” She raised her skirt a few inches to display her fragile, thin leather shoes. “Something more suitable for city walking,” she said proudly. No one was going to take her for a carriage-riding scallywag.

Mr. Braxton took an immaculate white handkerchief from his pocket and brushed off the spotless upholstery on two chairs. “If you ladies please . . .”

When he disappeared behind a curtain in the rear of the shop, Eleanor leaned close to Scarlett and whispered in her ear. “Look closely at his hair when he kneels to fit your boots. He colors it with boot polish.”

It took all of Scarlett’s self-control not to laugh when she saw that Mrs. Butler was right, especially when Eleanor was looking at her with such a conspiratorial twinkle in her dark eyes. When they left the shop, she began to giggle. “You shouldn’t have told me that, Miss Eleanor. I nearly made a spectacle of myself in there.”

Mrs. Butler smiled serenely. “You’ll recognize him easily in the future,” she said. “Now let’s go to Onslow’s for a dish of ice cream. One of the waiters there makes the best moonshine in all of South Carolina, and I want to order a few quarts for soaking the fruitcakes. The ice cream is excellent, too.”

“Miss Eleanor!”

“My dear, brandy’s not available for love nor money. We all have to make do the best we can, do we not? And there’s something quite exciting about black-market dealings, don’t you think?”

What Scarlett thought was that she didn’t blame Rhett one bit for adoring his mother.

Eleanor Butler continued to initiate Scarlett into the inner life of Charleston by going to the fancy goods draper for a spool of white cotton (the woman behind the counter had killed her husband with a sharpened knitting needle through the heart, but the judge ruled that he had fallen on it when he was drunk, because everyone had seen the bruises on her arms and face for years) and to the pharmacist for some witch hazel (poor man, he was so nearsighted he once paid a small fortune for a peculiar tropical fish preserved in alcohol that he was convinced was a small mermaid—for real medicine, always go to the shop on Broad Street that I’ll show you).

Scarlett was sorely disappointed when Eleanor said it was time to go home. She couldn’t remember ever having had such fun, and she almost begged for visits to a few more shops. But, “I think perhaps we’ll take the horsecar back downtown,” Mrs. Butler said. “I’m feeling a little tired.” And Scarlett immediately began to worry. Was Eleanor’s pallor a sign of illness instead of the pale skin so prized by ladies? She held her mother-in-law’s elbow when they stepped up into the brightly painted green and yellow tram and hovered over her until Eleanor settled into the wicker-covered seat. Rhett would never forgive her if she let something awful happen to his mother. She’d never forgive hersell, either.