Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

“If you don’t want me here, I’ll go to my cousins. The O’Haras have already invited me.”

Pierre Robillard’south jerked, a travesty of a smile. “You don’t mind sleeping in the parlor with the pig, I take it.”

Scarlett’s cheeks reddened. She’d always known her grandfather disapproved of her mother’s marriage. He’d never accepted Gerald O’Hara in his house. She wanted to defend her father, and her cousins, from his prejudice against the Irish. If only she didn’t have this terrible suspicion that the children brought the baby pigs into the house to play with.

“Never mind,” said her grandfather. “Stay if you like. It’s a matter of supreme indifference to me.” He closed his eyes, dismissing her from his sight and his attention.

Scarlett refrained with difficulty from slamming the door when she left the room. What a horrid old man! Still, she had gotten what she wanted. She smiled at her aunts. “Everything’s all right,” she said.

For the remainder of the morning, and all afternoon Scarlett cheerfully went along with her aunts to leave their cards at the houses of all their friends and acquaintances in Savannah. “P.P.C.” they hand-lettered in the lower left corner. “Pour prendre congé—to take leave.” The custom had never been observed in Atlanta, but in the older cities of coastal Georgia and South Carolina, it was a required ritual. Scarlett thought it a great waste of time to inform people you were leaving. Especially when, only a handful of days earlier, her aunts had worn themselves out leaving cards at the same houses to inform the same people that they had arrived. She was sure that most of those people hadn’t bothered to leave cards at the Robillard house. Certainly there had been no callers.

On Saturday she insisted on going to the train depot with them, and she saw to it that Pansy put their valises exactly where they wanted them, in full view so that no one could steal them. She kissed their papery wrinkled cheeks, returned to the busy platform, and waved goodbye while the train chugged out of the station.

“We’ll stop at the bakery on Broughton Street before we go back to the house,” she told the driver of the rented carriage. It was still a long time until dinner.

She sent Pansy to the kitchen to order a pot of coffee and then took off her hat and gloves. How lovely and quiet the house was with the aunts gone. But that was definitely a film of dust on the hall table. She’d have to have a few words with Jerome. The other servants, too, if necessary. She wasn’t going to have things looking shabby when Rhett arrived.

As if he’d read her mind, Jerome appeared behind her. Scarlett jumped. Why on earth couldn’t the man make a decent amount of noise when he walked?

“This message come for you, Miss Scarlett.” He held out a silver tray with a telegram on it.

Rhett! Scarlett grabbed the thin paper with too-eager, clumsy fingers. “Thank you, Jerome. See to my coffee, please.” The butler was too curious by half, in her opinion. She didn’t want him reading over her shoulder.

As soon as he was gone, she ripped open the message. “Damn!” she said. It was from Uncle Henry.

The normally thrifty old lawyer must have been deeply agitated because the telegram was wastefully wordy.

Scarlett sank onto a chair when she read it. Her knees were like water, and her heart was racing. The old fool! A half million dollars—that was probably more money than the bank had seen since before the War. What was to stop the officers from just pocketing it and closing the bank? Banks were still closing all over the country, it was in the paper all the time. She’d have to go to Atlanta at once, change the money to gold, add it to her safe box. But that would take days. Even if there was a train today, she wouldn’t get to the bank before Monday. Plenty of time for her money to disappear.

A half million dollars. More money than she’d have if she sold everything she owned twice over. More money than her store and her saloon and her new houses would make in thirty years. She had to protect it, but how? Oh, she could kill Uncle Henry!

When Pansy came upstairs proudly carrying the heavy silver tray with the gleaming coffee service on it, she was met by a pale, wild-eyed Scarlett. “Put that thing down and get your coat on,” said Scarlett. “We’re going out.”

She had herself under control; there was even a little color in her cheeks from the walk when she hurried into the O’Hara store. Cousin or not, she didn’t want Jamie to know too much about her business. So her voice was charmingly girlish when she asked him to recommend a banker. “I’ve been so giddy that I just haven’t paid any attention to my spending money, and now that I’ve decided to stay a while longer, I need to have a few dollars transferred from my bank at home, but I don’t know a soul here in Savannah. I figured you’d be able to put in a good word for me, being a prosperous businessman and all.”

Jamie grinned. “I’ll be proud to escort you to the president of the bank, and I’ll vouch for him because Uncle James has done business with him for fifty years and more. But you’ll do better, Scarlett, to tell him you’re old Robillard’s granddaughter than that you’re O’Hara’s cousin. The word is, he’s a very warm old gentleman. Wasn’t he the smart one who sent his brass to France when Georgia decided to follow South Carolina out of the Union?”

But that meant her grandfather was a traitor to the South! No wonder he still had all that heavy silver and that undamaged house. Why hadn’t he been lynched? And how could Jamie laugh about it? Scarlett remembered Maureen laughing about her grandfather, too, when she should by rights have been shocked. It was all very complicated. She didn’t know what to think. In any case, she didn’t have time to think about it now, she had to get to the bank and arrange about her money.

“You’ll watch the store, then, Daniel, while I walk out with Cousin Scarlett?” Jamie was beside her, offering his arm. Scarlett put her hand in the bend of his elbow and waved goodbye to Daniel. She hoped it wasn’t far to the bank. It was nearly noon.

“Maureen will be delighted that you’ll be with us for a bit,” said Jamie as they walked along Broughton Street with Pansy trailing behind. “Will you be coming over this evening, then, Scarlett? I could call for you on my way home to walk you there.”

“I’d like that very much, Jamie,” she said. She’d go crazy in that big house with no one to talk to but her grandfather, and him only for ten minutes. If Rhett came, she could always send Pansy to the store with a note saying she’d changed her mind.

As it turned out, she was waiting impatiently in the front hall for Jamie when he arrived. Her grandfather had been exceptionally nasty when she told him she was going out for the evening. “This is not a hotel where you can come and go as you please, miss. You’ll match your schedule to the routine of my house, and that means in your bed by nine o’clock.”

“Of course, Grandfather,” she had said meekly. She was sure she’d be home long before then. And besides, she was regarding him with increased respect ever since her visit to the bank president. Her grandfather must be much, much richer than she’d imagined. When Jamie introduced her as Pierre Robillard’s granddaughter, the man nearly split his britches bowing and scraping. Scarlett smiled, remembering. Then, after Jamie left, when I told him I wanted to rent a safe box and transfer a half million to it, I thought he’d swoon at my feet. I don’t care what anybody says, having lots of money is the best thing in the world.

“I can’t stay late,” she told Jamie when he arrived. “I hope that’s all right. You won’t mind walking me back by eight-thirty?”

“I’ll be honored to walk you anywhere at any time at all,” Jamie vowed.

Scarlett truly had no idea that she wouldn’t be back until almost dawn.

The evening started quietly enough. So quietly, in fact, that Scarlett was disappointed. She’d been expecting music and dancing and some kind of celebration, but Jamie escorted her to the now familiar kitchen of his house. Maureen greeted her with a kiss on each cheek and a cup of tea in her hand, then returned to the preparation of supper. Scarlett sat down next to Uncle James, who was dozing. Jamie took off his coat, unbuttoned his vest, and lit a pipe, then settled down in a rocking chair for a quiet smoke. Mary Kate and Helen were setting the table in the adjoining dining room, chattering to one another over the rattle of knives and forks. It was a comfortable family scene, but not very exciting. Still, thought Scarlett, at least there’s going to be supper. I knew Aunt Pauline and Aunt Eulalie must be wrong about the whole fasting nonsense. Nobody would live on only one meal a day for weeks and weeks on purpose.

After a few minutes the shy girl with the cloud of beautiful dark hair came in from the hall with little Jacky by the hand. “Oh, there you are, Kathleen,” said Jamie. Scarlett made a mental note of the name. It suited the girl, so soft and youthful. “Bring the little man to his old Pa.” Jacky pulled his hand away and ran to his father, and the brief tranquillity was over. Scarlett winced at the little boy’s shouts of joy. Uncle James snorted in sudden waking. The street door opened and Daniel came in with his younger brother Brian. “Look what I found sniffing at the door, Ma,” said Daniel.