Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

Scarlett laughed aloud. “I’m going to go!” she said. Suddenly she felt wonderful, even in her stomach. She stood up to hug Maureen and she barely noticed the pain in her feet.

Charleston could wait until she got back. Rhett could wait, too. Lord knows she’d waited for him often enough. Why shouldn’t she visit the rest of her O’Hara kin? It was only two weeks and a day on a great sailing ship to that other Tara. And she’d be Irish and happy for a while yet before she settled down to Charleston’s rules.

Her tender, wounded feet tapped out the rhythm of a reel.

Only two days later, she was able to dance for hours at the party to celebrate Stephen’s return from Boston. And not long after that, she found herself in an open carriage with Colum and Kathleen, on her way to the docks along Savannah’s riverfront.

It had been no trouble at all to get ready. Americans did not need passports for entrance to the British Isles. They didn’t even need letters of credit, but Colum insisted that she get one from her banker. “Just in case,” Colum said. He didn’t say in case of what. Scarlett didn’t care. She was intoxicated with the adventure of it all.

“You’re sure we’ll not miss our boat, Colum?” Kathleen fretted. “You were late coming for us. Jamie and them left an hour ago to walk over.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure,” Colum soothed. He winked at Scarlett. “And if I was tardy a bit, it was no fault of mine, seeing that Big Tom MacMahon wanted to pledge his promise about the Bishop in a glass or two, and I couldn’t insult the man.”

“If we miss our boat, I’ll die,” Kathleen moaned.

“Whist, stop your worrying, Kathleen mavourneen. The captain won’t sail without us; Seamus O’Brien’s a friend of many years’ standing. But he’ll be no friend of yours if you call the Brian Boru a boat. A ship she is, and a fine shining vessel she is, too. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.”

At that moment the carriage turned beneath an arch, and they plunged, skidding and jolting, down a dark, slippery, cobblestoned ramp. Kathleen screamed. Colum laughed. Scarlett was breathless from the thrill of it.

Then they were at the river. The tumult and color and chaos were even more exciting than the precipitous ride down to it. Ships of every size and kind were tied up to jutting wooden piers, more ships than she’d ever seen in Charleston. Loaded wagons pulled by heavy dray horses rattled wooden or iron wheels over the wide cobbled street in a constant din. Men shouted. Barrels rolled down wooden chutes onto wooden decks with a deafening clatter. A steamship blew its piercing whistle; another rang its clangorous bell. A row of barefooted loaders moved across a gangplank, carrying bales of cotton and singing. Flags in bright colors and gaudy decorated pennants snapped in the wind. Gulls swooped and squawked.

Their driver stood up and cracked his whip. The buggy jerked forward, scattering a crowd of gaping pedestrians. Scarlett laughed into the gusty wind. They careened around a phalanx of barrels awaiting loading, clattered past a slow-moving dray, and pulled to a jouncing halt.

“I hope you’re not expecting to be paid extra for the white hairs you’ve put on my head,” Colum said to the driver. He jumped down and held up his hand to Kathleen to help her down.

“You’ve not forgotten my box, Colum?” she said.

“All the traps are here betimes, darling. Go on over, now, and give your cousins a kiss to say goodbye.” He pointed towards Maureen. “You can’t miss that red hair shining like a beacon.”

When Kathleen ran off, he spoke quietly to Scarlett. “You’ll not forget what I told you about the name, now, Scarlett darling?”

“I won’t forget.” She smiled, enjoying the harmless conspiracy.

“You’ll be Scarlett O’Hara and no other on this voyage and in Ireland,” he had told her with a wink. “It’s nothing to do with you or yours, Scarlett darling, but Butler is a powerful famous name in Ireland, and all of its fame is heinous.”

Scarlett didn’t mind at all. She was going to enjoy being an O’Hara for as long as she could.

The Brian Boru was, as Colum had promised, a fine, shining ship. Her hull was gleaming white with gilt scroll trim. Gilt trimmed the emerald-colored cover of the gigantic paddle wheels as well, and her name in gilt letters two feet high was painted on them in a frame of gilt arrows. The Union Jack flew from her flagstaff, but a green silk banner decorated with a golden harp waved boldly from her forward mast. She was a luxury passenger ship, catering to the expensive tastes of rich Americans who travelled to Ireland for sentiment—to see the villages where emigrant grandfathers were born—or for show—to visit, in all their finery, the villages where they had been born. The public rooms and staterooms were oversized and overdecorated. The crew was trained to satisfy every whim. There was a disproportionately large hold, compared to the usual passenger ship, because Irish-Americans carried with them gifts for all their relatives and returned with multiple souvenirs of their visits. The baggage handlers treated every trunk and every crate as if it were full of glass. Often it was. It was not unknown for prosperous third-generation American Irish wives to light every room in their new houses with Waterford crystal chandeliers.

A broad platform with sturdy railings was built across the top of the paddle wheel on which Scarlett stood with Colum and a handful of adventurous passengers to wave a final goodbye to her cousins. There’d been time only for hasty farewells on the dock because the Brian Boru had to catch the outgoing tide. She blew excited kisses to the massed O’Haras. There’d been no school this morning for the children, and Jamie had even closed the store for an hour so that he and Daniel could come down and see them off.

Slightly behind and to one side of the others stood quiet Stephen. He raised his hand once in a signal to Colum.

It signified that Scarlett’s trunks had been opened and repacked en route to the ship. Among the layers of tissue paper and petticoats and frocks and gowns were the tightly wrapped, oiled rifles and the boxes of ammunition he had purchased in Boston.

Like their fathers and grandfathers and generations before them, Stephen, Jamie, Matt, Colum, and even Uncle James were all militantly opposed to English rule over Ireland. For more than two hundred years the O’Haras had risked their lives to fight, sometimes even kill, their foes, in abortive, ill-fated small actions. Only in the past ten years had an organization begun to grow. Disciplined and dangerous, financed from America, the Fenians were becoming known throughout Ireland. They were heroes to the Irish peasant, anathema to English landowners, and to English military forces revolutionaries fit only for death.

Colum O’Hara was the most successful fund-raiser and one of the foremost clandestine leaders of the Fenian Brotherhood.

The Brian Boru moved ponderously between the banks of the Savannah River, pulled by steamdriven tugboats. When at last it reached the Atlantic, its deep whistle saluted the departing tugs and its great sails were loosed. The passengers cheered as the ship’s prow dipped into the gray-green waves at the river’s mouth and the tremendous paddle wheels began to churn.

Scarlett and Kathleen stood side by side watching the flat shoreline recede quickly into a soft blur of green, then disappear.

What have I done? Scarlett thought, and she grabbed the deck rail in momentary panic. Then she looked ahead at the limitless expanse of sun-flecked ocean, and her heart beat faster with the thrill of adventure.

“Oh!” Kathleen cried out. Then, “Oooh,” she moaned.

“What’s wrong, Kathleen?”

“Oooh. I’d forgot the seasickness,” the girl gasped.

Scarlett held back her laughter. She put her arm around Kathleen’s waist and led her to their cabin. That evening, Kathleen’s chair at the captain’s table was empty. Scarlett and Colum did full justice to the gargantuan meal that was served. Afterwards, Scarlett took a bowl of broth to her unfortunate cousin and spoon-fed her.

“I’ll be all right in a day or two,” Kathleen promised in a weak voice. “You won’t need to be tending me forever.”

“Hush up and take another sip,” said Scarlett. Thank heavens I haven’t got a puny stomach, she thought. Even the food poisoning from Saint Patrick’s Day is over now, or I couldn’t have enjoyed my dinner so much.

She woke abruptly when the first red streaks of dawn were on the horizon and ran with frantic clumsiness into the small convenience room that adjoined the cabin. There she fell to her knees and vomited into the flower-decorated china receptacle of the mahogany chaise privée.

She couldn’t be seasick, not her. Not when she loved sailing so much. Why, in Charleston, when the tiny sailboat was climbing the waves in the storm, she hadn’t even felt queasy, nor when it slid down into the trough of the wave. The Brian Boru was steady as a rock compared to that. She couldn’t imagine what was wrong with her . . .

. . . Slowly, slowly Scarlett’s bent head rose from its drooping weakness. Her mouth and eyes opened wide with discovery. Excitement raced through her, hot and strengthening, and she laughed deep in her throat.

I’m pregnant. I’m pregnant! I remember; this is how it feels.

Scarlett leaned back against the wall and threw her arms wide in a luxurious stretch. Oh, I feel wonderful. I don’t care how awful my stomach feels, I feel wonderful. I’ve got Rhett now. He is mine. I can’t wait to tell him.