After Phillippe Robillard had been killed in his saloon dispute with the Vaux brothers (aptly named Cleaver and Carver) he'd been somewhat dismayed to discover that instead of moving on to the pearly gates, he was haunting a gold buttonhook that Phillippe had given to sweet Ellen, his younger cousin on her twelfth birthday.
Phillippe's father, Raslan, had hung himself after cheating at cards, a debt of honor thing that Phillippe had never quite understood, and his mother, Sagesse, had been shot by her lover's wife…and Phillippe had grown up from early childhood around Ellen's house, and loved his little dark haired cousin. She was a joy.
They had grown up together, and had begun keeping company when Ellen entered her teens, and of course her father had been aware that Phillippe, along with a vile temper, was courting other ladies, "good" girls and bad girls alike.
It was not Ellen's fault that Phillippe had the impulse control of an intoxicated grasshopper. He hit jaws and kissed lips with just a moment's desire!
Ellen had been four years Phillippe's junior when her hot headed nineteen year old beau had departed Savannah at the family's behest. They'd been just terrified that he would elope with Ellen, who was terribly besotted with him, and of course Phillippe was not a nice stable burgher like so many in Savannah land.
In fact, although Phillippe had been quite fond of Ellen, it had been less of a romance on his part for Phillippe had been tempestuous in his dealings with girls as he was in barroom disputes, and of course, in the street.
But Phillippe had enjoyed Ellen's company, and had been horrified and a bit nauseous when he'd returned (in spirit) to Savannah to learn Ellen's revengeful plans for Uncle Jacques having sent Phillippe away.
But the truth be told, Uncle Jacques, Ellen's adoring papa, had asked Phillippe "If you have serious plans for settling down, my lad, perhaps I can take a more lenient view"
And Phillippe, horrified by the evil phrase, "settling down" had told Ellen he was being banished from Savannah…and now she'd decided to wreak havoc on the Robillard family!
Ellen had chosen to wed a short, vulgar fossil…a howling leprechaun, this ancient, fortyish Gerald O'Hara. Why Ellen, why? Phillippe had wanted to scream in her face, but of course to Ellen he was now invisible.
There had been so many of Phillippe's friends, who had been in love with sweet Ellen, but she ignored them…boys who had just waited for Phillippe to get out of the way. And then this tiny Irishman came to town, related to vulgar little moneymen from County Cork.
Just as Hobie Lafrienere was flirting with Ellen a bit, the little bastard pushes up to her, with that drunken, wizened grin.
"Yer quite the damsel" he'd said to Ellen his grotesque little chin sweating, at the Moncreif's violin recital. This, while Aunt Pauline had gagged nearby.
How on earth had Gerald O'Hara charmed little Ellen? Could she have been that angry at her family? How could Ellen imagine having marital relations with such a—freckled lizard?
Phillippe had died barely at the end of his teens, and like most adolescents, the idea of any dealings with someone in their forties, to say nothing of marriage, was impossible.
Why had the Almighty punished Phillippe like this? Phillippe's spirit had stood screaming at Ellen as she sat next to her little sewing box (which held the gold buttonhook) and took the red nosed creature's ugly little County Cork hand and said "I will marry you, Mister O'Hara."
Would that Phillippe be done with it after this, but he had followed the gold buttonhook across Georgia to a drafty plantation (and no, they don't give ghosts a seat on trains, it had been a dreadful journey.
There, at the plantation Phillippe watched his beautiful little cousin go to work, fifteen years of age, struggling to manage a grotesque agrarian nightmare.
He had been mystified (Phillippe was entirely selfish) with Ellen's interest in medically assisting the sick field hands and area neighbors. He alone had known of Ellen's quiet love affairs with Jim Tarleton, whose horse obsessed wife was obviously, despite their eight offspring, a Daughter of Sappho, and the courtly but ravenous John Wilkes.
And then Phillippe had entertained himself over time as Ellen's tomboyish beauty of a daughter, little Katie Scarlett had been born, grown up raising hell all the way…only to do the same revengeful stupid thing! Couldn't have Wilkes, marries his milksop cousin.
And wasn't that revolting. The little creep's hands trembled, this Charles Hamilton as he stared at Scarlett at the wedding…he couldn't figure out how he'd gotten so lucky, much as Gerald O'Hara had, seventeen years before.
But Scarlett, like her mother, couldn't just walk it off, these resentments; no…she had to take marital action! And poor Phillippe, he couldn't be an interesting ghost like Blackbeard, no, he must witness poor judgment in French-Irish women.
Phillippe had entirely approved when Stuart Tarleton had shown up, screaming and threatening to murder all in sunder if his lady-love Scarlett, went through with this nonsense. But of course Scarlett had perversely married Charles Hamilton anyway, and then born him a mealy mouthed child…but by that time Hamilton had died in military training camp…of a silly war. (Though Phillippe would have enjoyed participation, it was to be sure. All that shooting, and deserted wives, and that sort of thing.)
Then, widowed, Scarlett marries an elderly storekeeper, who the idiot second daughter Suellen was going to wed. So Sue hitches up with a peg-legged tobacco spitter…and little Careen enters a nunnery, because her beau of about six weeks died in the war. Again, Phillippe wondered if there was a strain of mental illness in the women in the family.
And then Phillippe had been interested to find that Scarlett had married again, to a fellow Gold Rush adventurer, Captain Butler, though of course Phillippe had been killed in his detour in Louisiana. Phillippe was beginning to think that he should have just stayed home and played whist.
Yes, things were rather boring for Phillippe, as he was stranded always within twenty feet of the gold buttonhook, which remained for decades in the sewing box, on the little desk in Ellen's office.
When Ellen had died of typhoid, Phillippe had hoped she might join him as a spirit, but no, she'd gone directly Above, in an instant. And so Phillippe just hung about the sewing box, waiting for something to happen.
This had been especially annoying when all the talk of Scarlett and Peg-Leg Will's affair had gone on for most of the gossip had centered with clucking women sitting near the sewing box, and of course poor Phillippe, eternally nineteen had been unable to wander as far as wherever Scarlett and Will were actually having their fascinating assignation.
One day, in a fit of sentiment, Scarlett had taken the sewing box with her to Atlanta, and after forty years of haunting Tara, Phillippe was somewhat gratified to visit a city that he'd not seen since his (living) early teens.
The nervous, querulous Aunt Pittypat had actually borrowed the gold buttonhook and kept it for some weeks, and Phillippe had been tortured to a series of breathtakingly dull calls on staid matrons…
Phillippe had observed that Aunt Pitty was a bit of a kleptomaniac when she went into stores, and enjoyed setting servants off against each other with comments like "I see your Jilda still does a much better job at cleaning the parlor, now that you've sent Phaedra to clean the kitchen, tee-hee hee."
Phillippe's ethereal stomach had turned more than once as Aunt Pitty, on the verge of senility, had once used the gold buttonhook to clean her nose.
But then Scarlett had taken the buttonhook back, and noting it was pure gold, began carrying it around with her, and then life, or whatever Phillippe's curious existence or non-existence could be called, became quite interesting.
Not always in a charming way. Once Phillippe had been forced to endure (when Scarlett had left the buttonhook in the back room of the mercantile) her sodomite son having relations with a half-breed Negro youth on a bag of sorghum. What a family I was born into, Phillippe had thought, as he'd floated above the grunting youths. Was nothing sacred?
And Phillippe had of course agreed with Butler that his viewings of Ashley Wilkes made him just saddened to see men like that survived…it was good Wilkes had absconded.
But at other times, it seemed that Scarlett was redeeming the Robillard name. She was quite the little business woman, and Phillippe quite enjoyed it when Scarlett's estranged husband, Captain Butler, discovered that he would be unable to buy up all the shares to take over her sawmill, as another investor, a Dr. Klauder, had taken quite a financial interest.
"What's wrong, Rhett?" Scarlett had asked one afternoon with a smile as Rhett Butler fumed. "I was helpless when you were taking over rights to the sawmill to be what you called helpful, though I know you were angry about Ashley Wilkes's temporary management. Now he's disappeared, so you can't hang him, why not hang me?
But now I have Dr. Klauder, who has stock in the mills, and we will keep you at bay, dearest. Come now, you know if you weren't involved in this personally, you'd congratulate me for getting a little power, business wise. We're both scoundrels, right? That's what you're always telling me."
"Dammit, Scarlett. I have paid hard cash for that mill, and I don't want any damned interference!"
Phillippe floated in a sitting position just above the counter separating Scarlett and Rhett. He was quite amused. Butler's face grew red and he paced a bit and Phillippe wondered if Butler would actually swing on Scarlett. Things were certainly getting hot and heavy, weren't they?
Finally, a bit of fun.
"Miz Scarlett, she think she got Mist' Rhett in a bine, right, Fee-Leep?"
Startled, Phillippe turned to the first voice to directly address him in nearly half a century. Next to him was another floating figure, an obese grizzled black woman, also floating despite her incredible weight, up in the air.
It was Mammy, who Philippe had never liked much. Mammy had bad-mouthed him to Ellen, when they were children, and then he'd had to watch Mammy waddle around bossing everyone at Tara until she'd moved to Atlanta with Scarlett and suffered a stroke. Apparently she had left her corpus now.
"You doan recker-nize me, Mist' Fee-leep?" The ugly old face smiled. "Yeah you do. You done broke Miss Ellen's little heart when she nigh up to a june-bug, an' I had to hole the pieces, put em back together. Ah knows you took huh pearl without price, too."
Phillippe blanched, as much as an already pale spirit could, It was quite true. He had taken Ellen's virginity, as well as the "pearls" of many of the Savannah lasses.
"Did you just pass, Mammy?" Phillippe was desperate to change the subject. Imagine it, he was to haunt Scarlett, and Mammy was to haunt him?
"Runnin' off to New Awlins lak a damn fool." My she was sassy for a house nigger now. Of course Phillippe couldn't beat her or sell her.
"You must understand Mammy, I was ordered by Ellen's father to leave. I couldn't stay around there." But it was true, Phillippe could have done anything he liked. He was not interested in staying around poor Ellen, and Mammy had been kind enough not to alert her ward to the inequalities of the affection. But she was giving it to him now.
"Youse was just a coward, Fee-leep!"
And things had just begun to get interesting with Scarlett and Butler! To be saddled with a judgmental darky. What balderdash!
"You jes' wanted to prance around lak a peacock, you ain't got no claim on Miss Ellen 'r anythin' else. That po' chile, she done wasted her life fo' you."
Phillippe tried desperately to ignore Mammy and focus on the drama at hand.
Rhett was now shaking his fist in Scarlett's face, but Scarlett looked unperturbed.
"Cap'n Butlah woan hit Miss Scarlett. He's a gemp-mum through an' through, though he be a scallywag and a blackguard."
It was difficult, after all these pleasant spiritual judgmental years to have a fellow editorialist, Phillippe thought bitterly.
"You will find that I have dispatched with your precious co-investor, Dr. Klauder" Rhett said venomously, his moustache right in Scarlett's face. "I still have not discovered who will inherit his share of the—"
"It is obviously a matter of small penis syndrome that has fuelled his rage" came a strong German voice to the left of Phillippe. "I could tell when he shot me, der Captain was making up for an obvious rage deficiency."
Indeed, floating on Philippe's other side was a chubby bearded gentleman, complete with meerschaum pipe and pince-nez spectacles.
The ethereal world was getting much too crowded, Phillippe pondered. Could he make some deal with the Devil to be released from his bondage to the infernal gold buttonhook?
"Zis Butler is example of overwrought American masculinity. I was unable to reason with him, or perhaps him me, when he ordered me to sell my shares, rather surrender them, and so he shot me like a dog, and then dropped my corpse into a Milledgeville pigpen to be eaten."
Why couldn't he haunt the damned hogs then?, Phillippe fumed.
Rhett had not finished his diatribe either. "I've spent money I didn't need to spend on you and Ashley Wilkes and this infernal business of yours. You promised me when we married that you were not going to neglect me for this ridiculous company—and these sawmills."
"Rhett, I am never, never going to ever, ever depend on anyone else for support." Scarlett said, looking distractedly out the window. But then the green eyes focused right in on her husband.
"Fiddle-dee-dee, when I think about how little I knew about where the food, where the trinkets came from, before the war. And then during the war, when I was at Tara and had NOTHING."
"I had a commitment, I wanted to fulfill an admittedly foolish sentiment to serve the Cause, Scarlett, but it was there."
"What nonsense. You men use guns and marching as a way to avoid responsibility. I wish you'd been shot to death. I worked myself to the bone, and when I visited you in jail you laughed at my gnarled hands from picking cotton, you scoundrel."
Rhett's eyes grew damp. "I know it must have been very difficult for you, trying to keep all those people fed—"
"Fat lot of help you were! You ran off with the Army, in a war you knew couldn't be won. You wasted eight months on the Cause you derided!"
"Yes, Captain Butler shows evidence of borderline personality disorder" muttered Dr. Klauder's spirit vengefully. "A man like dis should not be allowed to wander free."
"White men love to shoot dem guns" Mammy commented on Phillippe's other side.
Phillippe felt as if he were sitting in an opera booth with gossiping old women.
"But Scarlett, I could have made it all up to you when we married. You could have sold all that rubbish from Kennedy, and invested the money, perhaps making nearly half of what you've made now, with none of the effort. It's such a waste."
Rhett was getting emotional now, and he sat down in a chair, waving his muscular arms.
"I worked myself to death as a blockade runner during the war. I chased the Gold Rush before that, and risked my neck hustling poker. But I'm done now. I can relax. You could relax. We could have a well deserved retirement together. If only—"
"But you said you wouldn't give me another chance." Scarlett interrupted with annoyance. "I don't get another chance, even when I told you eight years ago that I loved you, right after Melanie's death. I don't have time for self-abnegation."
Rhett shook his head dispiritedly.
"Now, now's the chance, woman!" Phillippe shouted to Scarlett's deaf ear. "Tell him you love him! Sell the stupid mill! What a waste!"
"He is a murdering psychopath." Dr. Klauder observed with a flush of his pipe. "Butler should be hanged."
"You should have stayed in yo' country 'stead of makin' trouble here in Atlant-er." Mammy said grimly.
Rhett looked up at Scarlett with brimming eyes. "Perhaps we can—forget it. You'll never give me another chance, and I am not going to let myself in for another bout of misery with you, Scarlett. If you like, I will give you the stocks to the business, free and clear. I'm—I've had enough."
Rhett threw a bunch of papers on the table and signed them, and was not surprised to see his wife's eyes take them in, greedily. "Now you can start all over again, and if Ashley Wilkes ever returns, divorce me and you can run the whole business to hell together."
Rhett got up and walked out of the mercantile, and Scarlett stood up. "Wait…wait!"
And then she sat back down, shaking her head, and the three ghosts continued to observe, cattily, as indeed they had nothing else to do.
Some weeks after this, the gold buttonhook had been stolen by an impoverished Carpetbagger, and Mammy,Phillippe, and Dr. Klauder had been taken to their first opium den.