Gone with the Wind (162 page)

Then before her eyes there loomed a light, a row of lights, dim and flickering but none the less real. In her nightmare, there had never been any lights, only gray fog. Her mind seized on those lights. Lights meant safety, people, reality. Suddenly she stopped running, her hands clenching, struggling to pull herself out of her panic, staring intently at the row of gas lamps which had signaled to her brain that this was Peachtree Street,
Atlanta, and not the gray world of sleep and ghosts.

She sank down panting on a carriage block, clutching at her nerves as though they were ropes slipping swiftly through her hands.

“I was running—running like a crazy person!” she thought, her body shaking with lessening fear, her thudding heart making her sick. “But where was I running?”

Her breath came more easily now and she sat with her hand pressed to her side and looked up Peachtree Street. There, at the top of the hill, was her own house. It looked as though every window bore lights, lights defying the mist to dim their brilliance. Home! It was real! She looked at the dim far-off bulk of the house thankfully, longingly, and something like calm fell on her spirit.

Home! That was where she wanted to go. That was where she was running. Home to Rhett!

At this realization it was as though chains fell away from her and with them the fear which had haunted her dreams since the night she stumbled to Tara to find the world ended. At the end of the road to Tara she had found security gone, all strength, all wisdom, all loving tenderness, all understanding gone—all those things which, embodied in Ellen, had been the bulwark of her girlhood. And, though she had won material safety since that night, in her dreams she was still a frightened child, searching for the lost security of that lost world.

Now she knew the haven she had sought in dreams, the place of warm safety which had always been hidden from her in the mist. It was not Ashley—oh, never Ashley! There was no more warmth in him than in a marsh light, no more security than in quicksand. It was Rhett—Rhett who had strong arms to hold her, a broad chest to pillow her tired head, jeering laughter to pull her affairs
into proper perspective. And complete understanding, because he, like her, saw truth as truth, unobstructed by impractical notions of honor, sacrifice or high belief in human nature. He loved her! Why hadn't she realized that he loved her, for all his taunting remarks to the contrary? Melanie had seen it and with her last breath had said, “Be kind to him.”

“Oh,” she thought, “Ashley's not the only stupidly blind person. I should have seen.”

For years she had had her back against the stone wall of Rhett's love and had taken it as much for granted as she had taken Melanie's love, flattering herself that she drew her strength from herself alone. And even as she had realized earlier in the evening that Melanie had been beside her in her bitter campaigns against life, now she knew that silent in the background, Rhett had stood, loving her, understanding her, ready to help. Rhett at the bazaar, reading her impatience in her eyes and leading her out in the reel, Rhett helping her out of the bondage of mourning, Rhett convoying her through the fire and explosions the night Atlanta fell, Rhett lending her the money that gave her her start, Rhett who comforted her when she woke in the nights crying with fright from her dreams—why, no man did such things without loving a woman to distraction!

The trees dripped dampness upon her but she did not feel it. The mist swirled about her and she paid it no heed. For when she thought of Rhett, with his swarthy face, flashing teeth and dark alert eyes, a trembling came over her.

“I love him,” she thought and, as always, she accepted the truth with little wonder, as a child accepting a gift. “I don't know how long I've loved him but it's true. And if
it hadn't been for Ashley, I'd have realized it long ago. I've never been able to see the world at all, because Ashley stood in the way.”

She loved him, scamp, blackguard, without scruple or honor—at least, honor as Ashley saw it. “Damn Ashley's honor!” she thought. “Ashley's honor has always let me down. Yes, from the very beginning when he kept on coming to see me, even though he knew his family expected him to marry Melanie. Rhett has never let me down, even that dreadful night of Melanie's reception when he ought to have wrung my neck. Even when he left me on the road the night Atlanta fell, he knew I'd be safe. He knew I'd get through somehow. Even when he acted like he was going to make me pay to get that money from him at the Yankee camp. He wouldn't have taken me. He was just testing me. He's loved me all along and I've been so mean to him. Time and again, I've hurt him and he was too proud to show it. And when Bonnie died— Oh, how could I?”

She stood up straight and looked at the house on the hill. She had thought, half an hour ago, that she had lost everything in the world, except money, everything that made life desirable, Ellen, Gerald, Bonnie, Mammy, Melanie and Ashley. She had to lose them all to realize that she loved Rhett—loved him because he was strong and unscrupulous, passionate and earthy, like herself.

“I'll tell him everything,” she thought. “He'll understand. He's always understood. I'll tell him what a fool I've been and how much I love him and I'll make it all up to him.”

Suddenly she felt strong and happy. She was not afraid of the darkness or the fog and she knew with a singing in her heart that she would never fear them
again. No matter what mists might curl around her in the future, she knew her refuge. She started briskly up the street toward home and the blocks seemed very long. Far, far too long. She caught up her skirts to her knees and began to run lightly. But this time she was not running from fear. She was running because Rhett's arms were at the end of the street.

T
HE FRONT DOOR WAS SLIGHTLY AJAR
and she trotted, breathless, into the hall and paused for a moment under the rainbow prisms of the chandelier. For all its brightness the house was very still, not with the serene stillness of sleep but with a watchful, tired silence that was faintly ominous. She saw at a glance that Rhett was not in the parlor or the library and her heart sank. Suppose he should be out—out with Belle or wherever it was he spent the many evenings when he did not appear at the supper table? She had not bargained on this.

She had started up the steps in search of him when she saw that the door of the dining room was closed. Her heart contracted a little with shame at the sight of that closed door, remembering the many nights of this last summer when Rhett had sat there alone, drinking until he was sodden and Pork came to urge him to bed. That had been her fault but she'd change it all. Everything was going to be different from now on—but, please God, don't let him be too drunk tonight. If he's too drunk he won't believe me and he'll laugh at me and that will break my heart.

She quietly opened the dining-room door a crack and peered in. He was seated before the table, slumped in his chair, and a full decanter stood before him with the stopper in place, the glass unused. Thank God, he was sober! She pulled open the door, holding herself back from running to him. But when he looked up at her, something in
his gaze stopped her dead on the threshold, stilled the words on her lips.

He looked at her steadily with dark eyes that were heavy with fatigue and there was no leaping light in them. Though her hair was tumbling about her shoulders, her bosom heaving breathlessly and her skirts mud splattered to the knees, his face did not change with surprise or question or his lips twist with mockery. He was sunken in his chair, his suit wrinkling untidily against his thickening waist, every line of him proclaiming the ruin of a fine body and the coarsening of a strong face. Drink and dissipation had done their work on the coin-clean profile and now it was no longer the head of a young pagan prince on new-minted gold but a decadent, tired Caesar on copper debased by long usage. He looked up at her as she stood there, hand on heart, looked quietly, almost in a kindly way, and that frightened her.

“Come and sit down,” he said. “She is dead?”

She nodded and advanced hesitantly toward him, uncertainty taking form in her mind at this new expression on his face. Without rising, he pushed back a chair with his foot and she sank into it. She wished he had not spoken of Melanie so soon. She did not want to talk of her now, to re-live the agony of the last hour. There was all the rest of her life in which to speak of Melanie. But it seemed to her now, driven by a fierce desire to cry: “I love you,” that there was only this night, this hour, in which to tell Rhett what was in her mind. But there was something in his face that stopped her and she was suddenly ashamed to speak of love when Melanie was hardly cold.

“Well, God rest her,” he said heavily. “She was the only completely kind person I ever knew.”

“Oh, Rhett!” she cried miserably, for his words
brought up too vividly all the kind things Melanie had ever done for her. “Why didn't you come in with me? It was dreadful—and I needed you so!”

“I couldn't have borne it,” he said simply and for a moment he was silent. Then he spoke with an effort and said, softly: “A very great lady.”

His somber gaze went past her and in his eyes was the same look she had seen in the light of the flames the night Atlanta fell, when he told her he was going off with the retreating army—the surprise of a man who knows himself utterly, yet discovers in himself unexpected loyalties and emotions and feels a faint self-ridicule at the discovery.

His moody eyes went over her shoulder as though he saw Melanie silently passing through the room to the door. In the look of farewell on his face there was no sorrow, no pain, only a speculative wonder at himself, only a poignant stirring of emotions dead since boyhood, as he said again: “A very great lady.”

Scarlett shivered and the glow went from her heart, the fine warmth, the splendor which had sent her home on winged feet. She half-grasped what was in Rhett's mind as he said farewell to the only person in the world he respected and she was desolate again with a terrible sense of loss that was no longer personal. She could not wholly understand or analyze what he was feeling, but it seemed almost as if she too had been brushed by whispering skirts, touching her softly in a last caress. She was seeing through Rhett's eyes the passing, not of a woman but a legend—the gentle, self-effacing but steel-spined women on whom the South had builded its house in war and to whose proud and loving arms it had returned in defeat.

His eyes came back to her and his voice changed. Now it was light and cool.

“So she's dead. That makes it nice for you, doesn't it?”

“Oh, how can you say such things,” she cried, stung, the quick tears coming to her eyes. “You know how I loved her!”

“No, I can't say I did. Most unexpected and it's to your credit, considering your passion for white trash, that you could appreciate her at last.”

“How can you talk so? Of course I appreciated her! You didn't. You didn't know her like I did! It isn't in you to understand her—how good she was—”

“Indeed? Perhaps not.”

“She thought for everybody except herself—why, her last words were about you.”

There was a flash of genuine feeling in his eyes as he turned to her.

“What did she say?”

“Oh, not now, Rhett.”

“Tell me.”

His voice was cool but the hand he put on her wrist hurt. She did not want to tell, this was not the way she had intended to lead up to the subject of her love but his hand was urgent.

“She said—she said—‘Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so much.'”

He stared at her and dropped her wrist. His eyelids went down, leaving his face a dark blank. Suddenly he rose and going to the window, he drew the curtains and looked out intently as if there were something to see outside except blinding mist.

“Did she say anything else?” he questioned, not turning his head.

“She asked me to take care of little Beau and I said I would, like he was my own boy.”

“What else?”

“She said—Ashley—she asked me to look after Ashley, too.”

He was silent for a moment and then he laughed softly.

“It's convenient to have the first wife's permission, isn't it?”

“What do you mean?”

He turned and even in her confusion she was surprised that there was no mockery in his face. Nor was there any more interest in it than in the face of a man watching the last act of a none-too-amusing comedy.

“I think my meaning's plain enough. Miss Melly is dead. You certainly have all the evidence you want to divorce me and you haven't enough reputation left for a divorce to hurt you. And you haven't any religion left, so the Church won't matter. Then—Ashley and dreams come true with the blessings of Miss Melly.”

“Divorce?” she cried. “No! No!” Incoherent for a moment, she leaped to her feet and running to him caught his arm. “Oh, you're all wrong! Terribly wrong. I don't want a divorce— I—” She stopped for she could find no other words.

He put his hand under her chin, quietly turned her face up to the light and looked for an intent moment into her eyes. She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes, her lips quivering as she tried to speak. But she could marshal no words because she was trying to find in his face some answering emotions, some leaping light of hope, of joy. Surely he must know, now! But the smooth dark blankness which had baffled her so often was all
that her frantic, searching eyes could find. He dropped her chin and, turning, walked back to his chair and sprawled tiredly again, his chin on his breast, his eyes looking up at her from under black brows in an impersonal speculative way.

She followed him back to his chair, her hands twisting, and stood before him.

“You are wrong,” she began again, finding words. “Rhett, tonight, when I knew, I ran every step of the way home to tell you. Oh, darling, I—”