[Part 7] "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗.

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OVER THE WAFFLES NEXT MORNING, Pittypat was lachrymose, Melanie was silent and Scarlett defiant.

“I don’t care if they do talk.

I’ll bet I made more money for the hospital than any girl there—more than all the messy old stuff we sold, too.”

“Oh, dear, what does the money matter?” wailed Pittypat wringing her hands.

“I just couldn’t believe my eyes, and poor Charlie hardly dead a year….

And that awful Captain Butler, making you so conspicuous, and he’s a terrible, terrible person, Scarlett.

Mrs. Whiting’s cousin, Mrs. Coleman, whose husband came from Charleston, told me about him.

He’s the black sheep of a lovely family—oh, how could any of the Butlers ever turn out anything like him?

He isn’t received in Charleston and he has the fastest reputation and there was something about a girl—something so bad Mrs. Coleman didn’t even know what it was—”

“Oh, I can’t believe he’s that bad,” said Melly gently.

“He seemed a perfect gentleman and when you think how brave he’s been, running the blockade—”

“He isn’t brave,” said Scarlett perversely, pouring half a pitcher of syrup over her waffles.

“He just does it for money.

He told me so.

He doesn’t care anything about the Confederacy and he says we’re going to get licked.

But he dances divinely.”

Her audience was speechless with horror.

“I’m tired of sitting at home and I’m not going to do it any longer.

If they all talked about me last night, then my reputation is already gone and it won’t matter what else they say.”

It did not occur to her that the idea was Rhett Butler’s.

It came so patly and fitted so well with what she was thinking.

“Oh!

What will your mother say when she hears?

What will she think of me?”

A cold qualm of guilt assailed Scarlett at the thought of Ellen’s consternation, should she ever learn of her daughter’s scandalous conduct.

But she took heart at the thought of the twenty-five miles between Atlanta and Tara.

Miss Pitty certainly wouldn’t tell Ellen.

It would put her in such a bad light as a chaperon.

And if Pitty didn’t tattle, she was safe.

“I think—” said Pitty, “yes, I think I’d better write Henry a letter about it—much as I hate it—but he’s our only male relative, and make him go speak reprovingly to Captain Butler—Oh, dear, if Charlie were only alive—You must never, never speak to that man again, Scarlett.”

Melanie had been sitting quietly, her hands in her lap, her waffles cooling on her plate.

She arose and, coming behind Scarlett, put her arms about her neck.

“Darling,” she said, “don’t get upset.

I understand and it was a brave thing you did last night and it’s going to help the hospital a lot.

And if anybody dares say one little word about you, I’ll tend to them….

Aunt Pitty, don’t cry.

It has been hard on Scarlett, not going anywhere.

She’s just a baby.”

Her fingers played in Scarlett’s black hair.

“And maybe we’d all be better off if we went out occasionally to parties.

Maybe we’ve been very selfish, staying here with our grief.

War times aren’t like other times.

When I think of all the soldiers in town who are far from home and haven’t any friends to call on at night—and the ones in the hospital who are well enough to be out of bed and not well enough to go back in the army—Why, we’ve been selfish.

We ought to have three convalescents in our house this minute, like everybody else, and some of the soldiers out to dinner every Sunday.

There, Scarlett, don’t you fret.

People won’t talk when they understand.

We know you loved Charlie.”

Scarlett was far from fretting and Melanie’s soft hands in her hair were irritating.

She wanted to jerk her head away and say “Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!” for the warming memory was still on her of how the Home Guard and the militia and the soldiers from the hospital had fought for her dances last night.

Of all the people in the world, she didn’t want Melly for a defender.

She could defend herself, thank you, and if the old cats wanted to squall—well, she could get along without the old cats.

There were too many nice officers in the world for her to bother about what old women said.

Pittypat was dabbing at her eyes under Melanie’s soothing words when Prissy entered with a bulky letter.

“Fer you, Miss Melly.

A lil nigger boy brung it.”

“For me?” said Melly, wondering, as she ripped open the envelope.

Scarlett was making headway with her waffles and so noticed nothing until she heard a burst of tears from Melly and, looking up, saw Aunt Pittypat’s hand go to her heart.

“Ashley’s dead!” screamed Pittypat, throwing her head back and letting her arms go limp.

“Oh, my god!” cried Scarlett, her blood turning to ice water.

“No!

No!” cried Melanie.

“Quick!

Her smelling salts, Scarlett!

There, there, honey, do you feel better?

Breathe deep.

No, it’s not Ashley.

I’m so sorry I scared you.

I was crying because I’m so happy,” and suddenly she opened her clenched palm and pressed some object that was in it to her lips.

“I’m so happy,” and burst into tears again.

Scarlett caught a fleeting glimpse and saw that it was a broad gold ring.

“Read it,” said Melly, pointing to the letter on the floor.

“Oh, how sweet, how kind, he is!”

Scarlett, bewildered, picked up the single sheet and saw written in a black, bold hand: “The Confederacy may need the lifeblood of its men but not yet does it demand the heart’s blood of its women.

Accept, dear Madam, this token of my reverence for your courage and do not think that your sacrifice has been in vain, for this ring has been redeemed at ten times its value.

Captain Rhett Butler.”

Melanie slipped the ring on her finger and looked at it lovingly.

“I told you he was a gentleman, didn’t I?” she said, turning to Pittypat, her smile bright through the teardrops on her face.

“No one but a gentleman of refinement and thoughtfulness would ever have thought how it broke my heart to—I’ll send my gold chain instead.

Aunt Pittypat, you must write him a note and invite him to Sunday dinner so I can thank him.”

In the excitement, neither of the others seemed to have thought that Captain Butler had not returned Scarlett’s ring, too.

But she thought of it, annoyed.

And she knew it had not been Captain Butler’s refinement that had prompted so gallant a gesture.

It was that he intended to be asked into Pittypat’s house and knew unerringly how to get the invitation.

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“I was greatly disturbed to hear of your recent conduct,” ran Ellen’s letter and Scarlett, who was reading it at the table, scowled.

Bad news certainly traveled swiftly.

She had often heard in Charleston and Savannah that Atlanta people gossiped more and meddled in other people’s business more than any other people in the South, and now she believed it.

The bazaar had taken place Monday night and today was only Thursday.

Which of the old cats had taken it upon herself to write Ellen?

For a moment she suspected Pittypat but immediately abandoned that thought.

Poor Pittypat had been quaking in her number-three shoes for fear of being blamed for Scarlett’s forward conduct and would be the last to notify Ellen of her own inadequate chaperonage.

Probably it was Mrs. Merriwether.

“It is difficult for me to believe that you could so forget yourself and your rearing.

I will pass over the impropriety of your appearing publicly while in mourning, realizing your warm desire to be of assistance to the hospital.

But to dance, and with such a man as Captain Butler!

I have heard much of him (as who has not?) and Pauline wrote me only last week that he is a man of bad repute and not even received by his own family in Charleston, except of course by his heartbroken mother.

He is a thoroughly bad character who would take advantage of your youth and innocence to make you conspicuous and publicly disgrace you and your family.

How could Miss Pittypat have so neglected her duty to you?”

Scarlett looked across the table at her aunt.

The old lady had recognized Ellen’s handwriting and her fat little mouth was pursed in a frightened way, like a baby who fears a scolding and hopes to ward it off by tears.

“I am heartbroken to think that you could so soon forget your rearing.

I have thought of calling you home immediately but will leave that to your father’s discretion.

He will be in Atlanta Friday to speak with Captain Butler and to escort you home.

I fear he will be severe with you despite my pleadings.

I hope and pray it was only youth and thoughtlessness that prompted such forward conduct.

No one can wish to serve our Cause more than I, and I wish my daughters to feel the same way, but to disgrace—”

There was more in the same vein but Scarlett did not finish it.

For once, she was thoroughly frightened.

She did not feel reckless and defiant now.

She felt as young and guilty as when she was ten and had thrown a buttered biscuit at Suellen at the table.

To think of her gentle mother reproving her so harshly and her father coming to town to talk to Captain Butler.

The real seriousness of the matter grew on her.

Gerald was going to be severe.

This was one time when she knew she couldn’t wiggle out of her punishment by sitting on his knee and being sweet and pert.

“Not—not bad news?” quavered Pittypat.

“Pa is coming tomorrow and he’s going to land on me like a duck on a June bug,” answered Scarlett dolorously.

“Prissy, find my salts,” fluttered Pittypat, pushing back her chair from her half-eaten meal.

“I—I feel faint.”

“Dey’s in yo’ skirt pocket,” said Prissy, who had been hovering behind Scarlett, enjoying the sensational drama.

Mist’ Gerald in a temper was always exciting, providing his temper was not directed at her kinky head.

Pitty fumbled at her skirt and held the vial to her nose.

“You all must stand by me and not leave me alone with him for one minute,” cried Scarlett.

“He’s so fond of you both, and if you are with me he can’t fuss at me.”

“I couldn’t,” said Pittypat weakly, rising to her feet.

“I—I feel ill.

I must go lie down.

I shall lie down all day tomorrow.

You must give him my excuses.”

“Coward!” thought Scarlett, glowering at her.

Melly rallied to the defense, though white and frightened at the prospect of facing the fire-eating Mr. O’Hara.

“I’ll—I’ll help you explain how you did it for the hospital.

Surely he’ll understand.”

“No, he won’t,” said Scarlett.

“And oh, I shall die if I have to go back to Tara in disgrace, like Mother threatens!”

“Oh, you can’t go home,” cried Pittypat, bursting into tears.

“If you did I should be forced—yes, forced to ask Henry to come live with us, and you know I just couldn’t live with Henry.

I’m so nervous with just Melly in the house at night, with so many strange men in town.

You’re so brave I don’t mind being here without a man!”

“Oh, he couldn’t take you to Tara!” said Melly, looking as if she too would cry in a moment.

“This is your home now.

What would we ever do without you?”

“You’d be glad to do without me if you knew what I really think of you,” thought Scarlett sourly, wishing there were some other person than Melanie to help ward off Gerald’s wrath.

It was sickening to be defended by someone you disliked so much.

“Perhaps we should recall our invitation to Captain Butler—” began Pittypat.

“Oh, we couldn’t!

It would be the height of rudeness!” cried Melly, distressed.

“Help me to bed.

I’m going to be ill,” moaned Pittypat.

“Oh, Scarlett, how could you have brought this on me?”

Pittypat was ill and in her bed when Gerald arrived the next afternoon.

She sent many messages of regret to him from behind her closed door and left the two frightened girls to preside over the supper table.

Gerald was ominously silent although he kissed Scarlett and pinched Melanie’s cheek approvingly and called her “Coussin Melly.”

Scarlett would have infinitely preferred bellowing oaths and accusations.

True to her promise, Melanie clung to Scarlett’s skirts like a small rustling shadow and Gerald was too much of a gentleman to upbraid his daughter in front of her.

Scarlett had to admit that Melanie carried off things very well, acting as if she knew nothing was amiss, and she actually succeeded in engaging Gerald in conversation, once the supper had been served.

“I want to know all about the County,” she said, beaming upon him.

“India and Honey are such poor correspondents, and I know you know everything that goes on down there.

Do tell us about Joe Fontaine’s wedding.”

Gerald warmed to the flattery and said that the wedding had been a quiet affair, “not like you girls had,” for Joe had only a few days’ furlough.

Sally, the little Munroe chit, looked very pretty.

No, he couldn’t recall what she wore but he did hear that she didn’t have “second-day” dress.

“She didn’t!” exclaimed the girls, scandalized.

“Sure, because she didn’t have a second day,” Gerald explained and bawled with laughter before recalling that perhaps such remarks were not fit for female ears.

Scarlett’s spirits soared at his laugh and she blessed Melanie’s tact.

“Back Joe went to Virginia the next day,” Gerald added hastily.

“There was no visiting about and dancing afterwards.

The Tarleton twins are home.”

“We heard that.

Have they recovered?”

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“They weren’t badly wounded.

Stuart had it in the knee and a minie ball went through Brent’s shoulder.

You had it, too, that they were mentioned in dispatches for bravery?”

“No!

Tell us!”

“Hare brained—both of them.

I’m believing there’s Irish in them,” said Gerald complacently.

“I forget what they did, but Brent is a lieutenant now.”

Scarlett felt pleased at hearing of their exploits, pleased in a proprietary manner.

Once a man had been her beau, she never lost the conviction that he belonged to her, and all his good deeds redounded to her credit.

“And I’ve news that’ll be holding the both of you,” said Gerald.

“They’re saying Stu is courting at Twelve Oaks again.”

“Honey or India?” questioned Melly excitedly, while Scarlett stared almost indignantly.

“Oh, Miss India, to be sure.

Didn’t she have him fast till this baggage of mine winked at him?”

“Oh,” said Melly, somewhat embarrassed at Gerald’s outspokenness.

“And more than that, young Brent has taken to hanging about Tara.

Now!”

Scarlett could not speak.

The defection of her beaux was almost insulting.

Especially when she recalled how wildly both the twins had acted when she told them she was going to marry Charles.

Stuart had even threatened to shoot Charles, or Scarlett, or himself or all three.

It had been most exciting.

“Suellen?” questioned Melly, breaking into a pleased smile.

“But I thought Mr. Kennedy—”

“Oh, him?” said Gerald.

“Frank Kennedy still pussyfoots about, afraid of his shadow, and I’ll be asking him his intentions soon if he doesn’t speak up.

No, ’tis me baby.”

“Carreen?”

“She’s nothing but a child!” said Scarlett sharply, finding her tongue.

“She’s little more than a year younger than you were, Miss, when you married,” retorted Gerald.

“Is it you’re grudging your old beau to your sister?”

Melly blushed, unaccustomed to such frankness, and signaled Peter to bring in the sweet potato pie.

Frantically she cast about in her mind for some other topic of conversation which would not be so personal but which would divert Mr. O’Hara from the purpose of his trip.

She could think of nothing but, once started, Gerald needed no stimulus other than an audience.

He talked on about the thievery of the commissary department which every month increased its demands, the knavish stupidity of Jefferson Davis and the blackguardery of the Irish who were being enticed into the Yankee army by bounty money.

When the wine was on the table and the two girls rose to leave him, Gerald cocked a severe eye at his daughter from under frowning brows and commanded her presence alone for a few minutes.

Scarlett cast a despairing glance at Melly, who twisted her handkerchief helplessly and went out, softly pulling the sliding doors together.

“How now, Missy!” bawled Gerald, pouring himself a glass of port.

“’Tis a fine way to act!

Is it another husband you’re trying to catch and you so fresh a widow?”

“Not so loud, Pa, the servants—”

“They know already, to be sure, and everybody knows of our disgrace.

And your poor mother taking to her bed with it and me not able to hold up me head.

’Tis shameful.

No, Puss, you need not think to get around me with tears this time,” he said hastily and with some panic in his voice as Scarlett’s lids began to bat and her mouth to screw up.

“I know you.

You’d be flirting at the wake of your own husband.

Don’t cry.

There, I’ll be saying no more tonight, for I’m going to see this fine Captain Butler who makes so light of me daughter’s reputation.

But in the morning—There now, don’t cry.

’Twill do you no good at all, at all.

’Tis firm that I am and back to Tara you’ll be going tomorrow before you’re disgracing the lot of us again.

Don’t cry, pet.

Look what I’ve brought you!

Isn’t that a pretty present?

See, look!

How could you be putting so much trouble on me, bringing me all the way up here when ’tis a busy man I am?

Don’t cry!”

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Melanie and Pittypat had gone to sleep hours before, but Scarlett lay awake in the warm darkness, her heart heavy and frightened in her breast.

To leave Atlanta when life had just begun again and go home and face Ellen!

She would rather die than face her mother.

She wished she were dead, this very minute, then everyone would be sorry they had been so hateful.

She turned and tossed on the hot pillow until a noise far up the quiet street reached her ears.

It was an oddly familiar noise, blurred and indistinct though it was.

She slipped out of bed and went to the window.

The street with its overarching trees was softly, deeply black under a dim star-studded sky.

The noise came closer, the sound of wheels, the plod of a horse’s hooves and voices.

And suddenly she grinned for, as a voice thick with brogue and whisky came to her, raised in “Peg in a Low-backed Car,” she knew.

This might not be Jonesboro on Court Day, but Gerald was coming home in the same condition.

She saw the dark bulk of a buggy stop in front of the house and indistinct figures alight.

Someone was with him.

Two figures paused at the gate and she heard the click of the latch and Gerald’s voice came plain.

“Now I’ll be giving you the ‘Lament for Robert Emmet.’

’Tis a song you should be knowing, me lad.

I’ll teach it to you.”

“I’d like to learn it,” replied his companion, a hint of buried laughter in his flat drawling voice.

“But not now, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Oh, my God, it’s that hateful Butler man!” thought Scarlett, at first annoyed.

Then she took heart.

At least they hadn’t shot each other.

And they must be on amicable terms to be coming home together at this hour and in this condition.

“Sing it I will and listen you will or I’ll be shooting you for the Orangeman you are.”

“Not Orangeman—Charlestonian.”

“’Tis no better.

’Tis worse.

I have two sister-in-laws in Charleston and I know.”

“Is he going to tell the whole neighborhood?” thought Scarlett panic-stricken, reaching for her wrapper.

But what could she do?

She couldn’t go downstairs at this hour of the night and drag her father in from the street.

With no further warning, Gerald, who was hanging on the gate, threw back his head and began the “Lament,” in a roaring bass.

Scarlett rested her elbows on the window sill and listened, grinning unwillingly.

It would be a beautiful song, if only her father could carry a tune.

It was one of her favorite songs and, for a moment, she followed the fine melancholy of those verses beginning: “She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps And lovers are round her sighing.”

The song went on and she heard stirrings in Pittypat’s and Melly’s rooms.

Poor things, they’d certainly be upset.

They were not used to full-blooded males like Gerald.

When the song had finished, two forms merged into one, came up the walk and mounted the steps.

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A discreet knock sounded at the door.

“I suppose I must go down,” thought Scarlett.

“After all he’s my father and poor Pitty would die before she’d go.”

Besides, she didn’t want the servants to see Gerald in his present condition.

And if Peter tried to put him to bed, he might get unruly.

Pork was the only one who knew how to handle him.

She pinned the wrapper close about her throat, lit her bedside candle and hurried down the dark stairs into the front hall.

Setting the candle on the stand, she unlocked the door and in the wavering light she saw Rhett Butler, not a ruffle disarranged, supporting her small, thickset father.

The “Lament” had evidently been Gerald’s swan song for he was frankly hanging onto his companion’s arm.

His hat was gone, his crisp long hair was tumbled in a white mane, his cravat was under one ear, and there were liquor stains down his shirt bosom.

“Your father, I believe?” said Captain Butler, his eyes amused in his swarthy face.

He took in her dishabille in one glance that seemed to penetrate through her wrapper.

“Bring him in,” she said shortly, embarrassed at her attire, infuriated at Gerald for putting her in a position where this man could laugh at her.

Rhett propelled Gerald forward.

“Shall I help you take him upstairs?

You cannot manage him.

He’s quite heavy.”

Her mouth fell open with horror at the audacity of his proposal.

Just imagine what Pittypat and Melly cowering in their beds would think, should Captain Butler come upstairs!

“Mother of God, no!

In here, in the parlor on that settee.”

“The suttee, did you say?”

“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.

Here.

Now lay him down.”

“Shall I take off his boots?”

“No.

He’s slept in them before.”

She could have bitten off her tongue for that slip, for he laughed softly as he crossed Gerald’s legs.

“Please go, now.”

He walked out into the dim hall and picked up the hat he had dropped on the doorsill.

“I will be seeing you Sunday at dinner,” he said and went out, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

Scarlett arose at five-thirty, before the servants had come in from the back yard to start breakfast, and slipped down the steps to the quiet lower floor.

Gerald was awake, sitting on the sofa, his hands gripping his bullet head as if he wished to crush it between his palms.

He looked up furtively as she entered.

The pain of moving his eyes was too excruciating to be borne and he groaned.

“Wurra the day!”

“It’s a fine way you’ve acted, Pa,” she began in a furious whisper.

“Coming home at such an hour and waking all the neighbors with your singing.”

“I sang?”

“Sang!

You woke the echoes singing the ‘Lament.’”

“’Tis nothing I’m remembering.”

“The neighbors will remember it till their dying day and so will Miss Pittypat and Melanie.”

“Mother of Sorrows,” moaned Gerald, moving a thickly furred tongue around parched lips.

“’Tis little I’m remembering after the game started.”

“Game?”

“That laddybuck Butler bragged that he was the best poker player in—”

“How much did you lose?”

“Why, I won, naturally.

A drink or two helps me game.”

“Look in your wallet.”

As if every movement was agony, Gerald removed his wallet from his coat and opened it.

It was empty and he looked at it in forlorn bewilderment.

“Five hundred dollars,” he said.

“And ’twas to buy things from the blockaders for Mrs. O’Hara, and now not even fare left to Tara.”

As she looked indignantly at the empty purse, an idea took form in Scarlett’s mind and grew swiftly.

“I’ll not be holding up my head in this town,” she began.

“You’ve disgraced us all.”

“Hold your tongue, Puss.

Can you not see me head is bursting?”

“Coming home drunk with a man like Captain Butler, and singing at the top of your lungs for everyone to hear and losing all that money.”

“The man is too clever with cards to be a gentleman.

He—”

“What will Mother say when she hears?”

He looked up in sudden anguished apprehension.

“You wouldn’t be telling your mother a word and upsetting her, now would you?”

Scarlett said nothing but pursed her lips.

“Think now how ’twould hurt her and her so gentle.”

“And to think, Pa, that you said only last night I had disgraced the family!

Me, with my poor little dance to make money for the soldiers.

Oh, I could cry.”

“Well, don’t,” pleaded Gerald.

“’Twould be more than me poor head could stand and sure ’tis bursting now.”

“And you said that I—”

“Now Puss, now Puss, don’t you be hurt at what your poor old father said and him not meaning a thing and not understanding a thing!

Sure, you’re a fine well-meaning girl, I’m sure.”

“And wanting to take me home in disgrace.”

“Ah, darling, I wouldn’t be doing that.

’Twas to tease you.

You won’t be mentioning the money to your mother and her in a flutter about expenses already?”

“No,” said Scarlett frankly, “I won’t, if you’ll let me stay here and if you’ll tell Mother that ’twas nothing but a lot of gossip from old cats.”

Gerald looked mournfully at his daughter.

“’Tis blackmail, no less.”

“And last night was a scandal, no less.”

“Well,” he began wheedlingly, “we’ll be forgetting all that.

And do you think a fine pretty lady like Miss Pittypat would be having any brandy in the house?

The hair of the dog—”

Scarlett turned and tiptoed through the silent hall into the dining room to get the brandy bottle that she and Melly privately called the “swoon bottle” because Pittypat always took a sip from it when her fluttering heart made her faint—or seem to faint.

Triumph was written on her face and no trace of shame for her unfilial treatment of Gerald.

Now Ellen would be soothed with lies if any other busybody wrote her.

Now she could stay in Atlanta.

Now she could do almost as she pleased, Pittypat being the weak vessel that she was.

She unlocked the cellaret and stood for a moment with the bottle and glass pressed to her bosom.

She saw a long vista of picnics by the bubbling waters of Peachtree Creek and barbecues at Stone Mountain, receptions and balls, afternoon danceables, buggy rides and Sunday-night buffet suppers.

She would be there, right in the heart of things, right in the center of a crowd of men.

And men fell in love so easily, after you did little things for them at the hospital.

She wouldn’t mind the hospital so much now.

Men were so easily stirred when they had been ill.

They fell into a clever girl’s hand, just like the ripe peaches at Tara when the trees were gently shaken.

She went back toward her father with the reviving liquor, thanking Heaven that the famous O’Hara head had not been able to survive last night’s bout and wondering suddenly if Rhett Butler had had anything to do with that.

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐈.

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ON AN AFTERNOON OF THE FOLLOWING WEEK, Scarlett came home from the hospital weary and indignant.

She was tired from standing on her feet all morning and irritable because Mrs. Merriwether had scolded her sharply for sitting on a soldier’s bed while she dressed his wounded arm.

Aunt Pitty and Melanie, bonneted in their best, were on the porch with Wade and Prissy, ready for their weekly round of calls.

Scarlett asked to be excused from accompanying them and went upstairs to her room.

When the last sound of carriage wheels had died away and she knew the family was safely out of sight, she slipped quietly into Melanie’s room and turned the key in the lock.

It was a prim, virginal little room and it lay still and warm in the slanting rays of the four-o’clock sun.

The floors were glistening and bare except for a few bright rag rugs, and the white walls unornamented save for one corner which Melanie had fitted up as a shrine.

Here, under a draped Confederate flag, hung the gold-hilted saber that Melanie’s father had carried in the Mexican War, the same saber Charles had worn away to war.

Charles’ sash and pistol belt hung there too, with his revolver in the holster.

Between the saber and the pistol was a daguerreotype of Charles himself, very stiff and proud in his gray uniform, his great brown eyes shining out of the frame and a shy smile on his lips.

Scarlett did not even glance at the picture but went unhesitatingly across the room to the square rosewood writing box that stood on the table beside the narrow bed.

From it she took a pack of letters tied together with a blue ribbon, addressed in Ashley’s hand to Melanie.

On the top was the letter which had come that morning and this one she opened.

When Scarlett first began secretly reading these letters, she had been so stricken of conscience and so fearful of discovery she could hardly open the envelopes for trembling.

Now, her never-too-scrupulous sense of honor was dulled by repetition of the offense and even fear of discovery had subsided.

Occasionally, she thought with a sinking heart, “What would Mother say if she knew?”

She knew Ellen would rather see her dead than know her guilty of such dishonor.

This had worried Scarlett at first, for she still wanted to be like her mother in every respect.

But the temptation to read the letters was too great and she put the thought of Ellen out of her mind.

She had become adept at putting unpleasant thoughts out of her mind these days.

She had learned to say, “I won’t think of this or that bothersome thought now.

I’ll think about it tomorrow.”

Generally when tomorrow came, the thought either did not occur at all or it was so attenuated by the delay it was not very troublesome.

So the matter of Ashley’s letters did not lie very heavily on her conscience.

Melanie was always generous with the letters, reading parts of them aloud to Aunt Pitty and Scarlett.

But it was the part she did not read that tormented Scarlett, that drove her to surreptitious reading of her sister-in-law’s mail.

She had to know if Ashley had come to love his wife since marrying her.

She had to know if he even pretended to love her.

Did he address tender endearments to her?

What sentiments did he express and with what warmth?

She carefully smoothed out the letter.

Ashley’s small even writing leaped up at her as she read, “My dear wife,” and she breathed in relief.

He wasn’t calling Melanie “Darling” or “Sweetheart” yet.

“My dear wife: You write me saying you are alarmed lest I be concealing my real thoughts from you and you ask me what is occupying my mind these days—”

“Mother of God!” thought Scarlett, in a panic of guilt.

“‘Concealing his real thoughts.’

Can Melly have read his mind?

Or my mind?

Does she suspect that he and I—”

Her hands trembled with fright as she held the letter closer, but as she read the next paragraph she relaxed.

“Dear Wife, if I have concealed aught from you it is because I did not wish to lay a burden on your shoulders, to add to your worries for my physical safety with those of my mental turmoil.

But I can keep nothing from you, for you know me too well.

Do not be alarmed.

I have no wound.

I have not been ill.

I have enough to eat and occasionally a bed to sleep in.

A soldier can ask for no more.

But, Melanie, heavy thoughts lie on my heart and I will open my heart to you.

“These summer nights I lie awake, long after the camp is sleeping, and I look up at the stars and, over and over, I wonder, ‘Why are you here, Ashley Wilkes?

What are you fighting for?’

“Not for honor and glory, certainly.

War is a dirty business and I do not like dirt.

I am not a soldier and I have no desire to seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth.

Yet, here I am at the wars—whom God never intended to be other than a studious country gentleman.

For, Melanie, bugles do not stir my blood nor drums entice my feet and I see too clearly that we have been betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern selves, believing that one of us could whip a dozen Yankees, believing that King Cotton could rule the world.

Betrayed, too, by words and catch phrases, prejudices and hatreds coming from the mouths of those highly placed, those men whom we respected and revered—‘King Cotton, Slavery, States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’

“And so when I lie on my blanket and look up at the stars and say ‘What are you fighting for?’ I think of States’ Rights and cotton and the darkies and the Yankees whom we have been bred up to hate, and I know that none of these is the reason why I am fighting.

Instead, I see Twelve Oaks and remember how the moonlight slants across the white columns, and the unearthly way the magnolias look, opening under the moon, and how the climbing roses make the side porch shady even at hottest noon.

And I see Mother, sewing there, as she did when I was a little boy.

And I hear the darkies coming home across the fields at dusk, tired and singing and ready for supper, and the sound of the windlass as the bucket goes down into the cool well.

And there’s the long view down the road to the river, across the cotton fields, and the mist rising from the bottom lands in the twilight.

And that is why I’m here who have no love of death or misery or glory and no hatred for anyone.

Perhaps that is what is called patriotism, love of home and country.

But, Melanie, it goes deeper than that.

For, Melanie, these things I have named are but the symbols of the thing for which I risk my life, symbols of the kind of life I love.

For I am fighting for the old days, the old ways I love so much but which, I fear, are now gone forever, no matter how the die may fall.

For, win or lose, we lose just the same.

“If we win this war and have the Cotton Kingdom of our dreams, we still have lost, for we will become a different people and the old quiet ways will go.

The world will be at our doors clamoring for cotton and we can command our own price.

Then, I fear, we will become like the Yankees, at whose money-making activities, acquisitiveness and commercialism we now sneer.

And if we lose, Melanie, if we lose!

“I am not afraid of danger or capture or wounds or even death, if death must come, but I do fear that once this war is over, we will never get back to the old times.

And I belong in those old times.

I do not belong in this mad present of killing and I fear I will not fit into any future, try though I may.

Nor will you, my dear, for you and I are of the same blood.

I do not know what the future will bring, but it cannot be as beautiful or as satisfying as the past.

“I lie and look at the boys sleeping near me and I wonder if the twins or Alex or Cade think these same thoughts.

I wonder if they know they are fighting for a Cause that was lost the minute the first shot was fired, for our Cause is really our own way of living and that is gone already.

But I do not think they think these things and they are lucky.

“I had not thought of this for us when I asked you to marry me.

I had thought of life going on at Twelve Oaks as it had always done, peacefully, easily, unchanging.

We are alike, Melanie, loving the same quiet things, and I saw before us a long stretch of uneventful years in which to read, hear music and dream.

But not this!

Never this!

That this could happen to us all, this wrecking of old ways, this bloody slaughter and hate!

Melanie, nothing is worth it—States’ Rights, nor slaves, nor cotton.

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Nothing is worth what is happening to us now and what may happen, for if the Yankees whip us the future will be one of incredible horror.

And, my dear, they may yet whip us.

“I should not write those words.

I should not even think them.

But you have asked me what was in my heart, and the fear of defeat is there.

Do you remember at the barbecue, the day our engagement was announced, that a man named Butler, a Charlestonian by his accent, nearly caused a fight by his remarks about the ignorance of Southerners?

Do you recall how the twins wanted to shoot him because he said we had few foundries and factories, mills and ships, arsenals and machine shops?

Do you recall how he said the Yankee fleet could bottle us up so tightly we could not ship out our cotton?

He was right.

We are fighting the Yankees’ new rifles with Revolutionary War muskets, and soon the blockade will be too tight for even medical supplies to slip in.

We should have paid heed to cynics like Butler who knew, instead of statesmen who felt—and talked.

He said, in effect, that the South had nothing with which to wage war but cotton and arrogance.

Our cotton is worthless and what he called arrogance is all that is left.

But I call that arrogance matchless courage.

If—”

But Scarlett carefully folded up the letter without finishing it and thrust it back into the envelope, too bored to read further.

Besides, the tone of the letter vaguely depressed her with its foolish talk of defeat.

After all, she wasn’t reading Melanie’s mail to learn Ashley’s puzzling and uninteresting ideas.

She had had to listen to enough of them when he sat on the porch at Tara in days gone by.

All she wanted to know was whether he wrote impassioned letters to his wife.

So far he had not.

She had read every letter in the writing box and there was nothing in any one of them that a brother might not have written to a sister.

They were affectionate, humorous, discursive, but not the letters of a lover.

Scarlett had received too many ardent love letters herself not to recognize the authentic note of passion when she saw it.

And that note was missing.

As always after her secret readings, a feeling of smug satisfaction enveloped her, for she felt certain that Ashley still loved her.

And always she wondered sneeringly why Melanie did not realize that Ashley only loved her as a friend.

Melanie evidently found nothing lacking in her husband’s messages but Melanie had had no other man’s love letters with which to compare Ashley’s.

“He writes such crazy letters,” Scarlett thought.

“If ever any husband of mine wrote me such twaddle-twaddle, he’d certainly hear from me!

Why, even Charlie wrote better letters than these.”

She flipped back the edges of the letters, looking at the dates, remembering their contents.

In them there were no fine descriptive passages of bivouacs and charges such as Darcy Meade wrote his parents or poor Dallas McLure had written his old-maid sisters, Misses Faith and Hope.

The Meades and the McLures proudly read these letters all over the neighborhood, and Scarlett had frequently felt a secret shame that Melanie had no such letters from Ashley to read aloud at sewing circles.

It was as though when writing Melanie, Ashley tried to ignore the war altogether, and sought to draw about the two of them a magic circle of timelessness, shutting out everything that had happened since Fort Sumter was the news of the day.

It was almost as if he were trying to believe there wasn’t any war.

He wrote of books which he and Melanie had read and songs they had sung, of old friends they knew and places he had visited on his Grand Tour.

Through the letters ran a wistful yearning to be back home at Twelve Oaks, and for pages he wrote of the hunting and the long rides through the still forest paths under frosty autumn stars, the barbecues, the fish fries, the quiet of moonlight nights and the serene charm of the old house.

She thought of his words in the letter she had just read: “Not this!

Never this!” and they seemed the cry of a tormented soul facing something he could not face, yet must face.

It puzzled her for, if he was not afraid of wounds and death, what was it he feared?

Unanalytical, she struggled with the complex thought.

“The war disturbs him and he—he doesn’t like things that disturb him….

Me, for instance….

He loved me but he was afraid to marry me because—for fear I’d upset his way of thinking and living.

No, it wasn’t exactly that he was afraid.

Ashley isn’t a coward.

He couldn’t be when he’s been mentioned in dispatches and when Colonel Sloan wrote that letter to Melly all about his gallant conduct in leading the charge.

Once he’s made up his mind to something, no one could be braver or more determined but—He lives inside his head instead of outside in the world and he hates to come out into the world and—Oh, I don’t know what it is!

If I’d just understood this one thing about him years ago, I know he’d have married me.”

She stood for a moment holding the letters to her breast, thinking longingly of Ashley.

Her emotions toward him had not changed since the day when she first fell in love with him.

They were the same emotions that struck her speechless that day when she was fourteen years old and she had stood on the porch of Tara and seen Ashley ride up smiling, his hair shining silver in the morning sun.

Her love was still a young girl’s adoration for a man she could not understand, a man who possessed all the qualities she did not own but which she admired.

He was still a young girl’s dream of the Perfect Knight and her dream asked no more than acknowledgment of his love, went no further than hopes of a kiss.

After reading the letters, she felt certain he did love her, Scarlett, even though he had married Melanie, and that certainty was almost all that she desired.

She was still that young and untouched.

Had Charles with his fumbling awkwardness and his embarrassed intimacies tapped any of the deep vein of passionate feeling within her, her dreams of Ashley would not be ending with a kiss.

But those few moonlight nights alone with Charles had not touched her emotions or ripened her to maturity.

Charles had awakened no idea of what passion might be or tenderness or true intimacy of body or spirit.

All that passion meant to her was servitude to inexplicable male madness, unshared by females, a painful and embarrassing process that led inevitably to the still more painful process of childbirth.

That marriage should be like this was no surprise to her.

Ellen had hinted before the wedding that marriage was something women must bear with dignity and fortitude, and the whispered comments of other matrons since her widowhood had confirmed this.

Scarlett was glad to be done with passion and marriage.

She was done with marriage but not with love, for her love for Ashley was something different, having nothing to do with passion or marriage, something sacred and breath-takingly beautiful, an emotion that grew stealthily through the long days of her enforced silence, feeding on oft-thumbed memories and hopes.

She sighed as she carefully tied the ribbon about the packet, wondering for the thousandth time just what it was in Ashley that eluded her understanding.

She tried to think the matter to some satisfactory conclusion but, as always, the conclusion evaded her uncomplex mind.

She put the letters back in the lap secretary and closed the lid.

Then she frowned, for her mind went back to the last part of the letter she had just read, to his mention of Captain Butler.

How strange that Ashley should be impressed by something that scamp had said a year ago.

Undeniably Captain Butler was a scamp, for all that he danced divinely.

No one but a scamp would say the things about the Confederacy that he had said at the bazaar.

She crossed the room to the mirror and patted her smooth hair approvingly.

Her spirits rose, as always at the sight of her white skin and slanting green eyes, and she smiled to bring out her dimples.

Then she dismissed Captain Butler from her mind as she happily viewed her reflection, remembering how Ashley had always liked her dimples.

No pang of conscience at loving another woman’s husband or reading that woman’s mail disturbed her pleasure in her youth and charm and her renewed assurance of Ashley’s love.

She unlocked the door and went down the dim winding stair with a light heart.

Halfway down she began singing “When This Cruel War Is Over.”

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐈𝐈.

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THE WAR WENT ON, successfully for the most part, but people had stopped saying “One more victory and the war is over,” just as they had stopped saying the Yankees were cowards.

It was obvious to all now that the Yankees were far from cowardly and that it would take more than one victory to conquer them.

However, there were the Confederate victories in Tennessee scored by General Morgan and General Forrest and the triumph at the Second Battle of Bull Run hung up like visible Yankee scalps to gloat over.

But there was a heavy price on these scalps.

The hospitals and homes of Atlanta were overflowing with sick and wounded, and more and more women were appearing in black.

The monotonous rows of soldiers’ graves at Oakland Cemetery stretched longer every day.

Confederate money had dropped alarmingly and the price of food and clothing had risen accordingly.

The commissary was laying such heavy levies on foodstuffs that the tables of Atlanta were beginning to suffer.

White flour was scarce and so expensive that corn bread was universal instead of biscuits, rolls and waffles.

The butcher shops carried almost no beef and very little mutton, and that mutton cost so much only the rich could afford it.

However there was still plenty of hog meat, as well as chickens and vegetables.

The Yankee blockade about the Confederate ports had tightened, and luxuries such as tea, coffee, silks, whalebone stays, colognes, fashion magazines and books were scarce and dear.

Even the cheapest cotton goods had skyrocketed in price and ladies were regretfully making their old dresses do another season.

Looms that had gathered dust for years had been brought down from attics, and there were webs of homespun to be found in nearly every parlor.

Everyone, soldiers, civilians, women, children and negroes, began to wear homespun.

Gray, as the color of the Confederate uniform, practically disappeared and homespun of a butternut shade took its place.

Already the hospitals were worrying about the scarcity of quinine, calomel, opium, chloroform and iodine.

Linen and cotton bandages were too precious now to be thrown away when used, and every lady who nursed at the hospitals brought home baskets of bloody strips to be washed and ironed and returned for use on other sufferers.

But to Scarlett, newly emerged from the chrysalis of widowhood, all the war meant was a time of gaiety and excitement.

Even the small privations of clothing and food did not annoy her, so happy was she to be in the world again.

When she thought of the dull times of the past year, with the days going by one very much like another, life seemed to have quickened to an incredible speed.

Every day dawned as an exciting adventure, a day in which she would meet new men who would ask to call on her, tell her how pretty she was, and how it was a privilege to fight and, perhaps, to die for her.

She could and did love Ashley with the last breath in her body, but that did not prevent her from inveigling other men into asking to marry her.

The ever-present war in the background lent a pleasant informality to social relations, an informality which older people viewed with alarm.

Mothers found strange men calling on their daughters, men who came without letters of introduction and whose antecedents were unknown.

To their horror, mothers found their daughters holding hands with these men.

Mrs. Merriwether, who had never kissed her husband until after the wedding ceremony, could scarcely believe her eyes when she caught Maybelle kissing the little Zouave, René Picard, and her consternation was even greater when Maybelle refused to be ashamed.

Even the fact that René immediately asked for her hand did not improve matters.

Mrs. Merriwether felt that the South was heading for a complete moral collapse and frequently said so.

Other mothers concurred heartily with her and blamed it on the war.

But men who expected to die within a week or a month could not wait a year before they begged to call a girl by her first name, with “Miss,” of course, preceding it.

Nor would they go through the formal and protracted courtships which good manners had prescribed before the war.

They were likely to propose in three or four months.

And girls who knew very well that a lady always refused a gentleman the first three times he proposed rushed headlong to accept the first time.

This informality made the war a lot of fun for Scarlett.

Except for the messy business of nursing and the bore of bandage rolling, she did not care if the war lasted forever.

In fact, she could endure the hospital with equanimity now because it was a perfect happy hunting ground.

The helpless wounded succumbed to her charms without a struggle.

Renew their bandages, wash their faces, pat up their pillows and fan them, and they fell in love.

Oh, it was Heaven after the last dreary year!

Scarlett was back again where she had been before she married Charles and it was as if she had never married him, never felt the shock of his death, never borne Wade.

War and marriage and childbirth had passed over her without touching any deep chord within her and she was unchanged.

She had a child but he was cared for so well by the others in the red-brick house she could almost forget him.

In her mind and heart, she was Scarlett O’Hara again, the belle of the County.

Her thoughts and activities were the same as they had been in the old days, but the field of her activities had widened immensely.

Careless of the disapproval of Aunt Pitty’s friends, she behaved as she had behaved before her marriage, went to parties, danced, went riding with soldiers, flirted, did everything she had done as a girl, except stop wearing mourning.

This she knew would be a straw that would break the backs of Pittypat and Melanie.

She was as charming a widow as she had been a girl, pleasant when she had her own way, obliging as long as it did not discommode her, vain of her looks and her popularity.

She was happy now where a few weeks before she had been miserable, happy with her beaux and their reassurances of her charm, as happy as she could be with Ashley married to Melanie and in danger.

But somehow it was easier to bear the thought of Ashley belonging to some one else when he was far away.

With the hundreds of miles stretching between Atlanta and Virginia, he sometimes seemed as much hers as Melanie’s.

So the autumn months of 1862 went swiftly by with nursing, dancing, driving and bandage rolling taking up all the time she did not spend on brief visits to Tara.

These visits were disappointing, for she had little opportunity for the long quiet talks with her mother to which she looked forward while in Atlanta, no time to sit by Ellen while she sewed, smelling the faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet as her skirts rustled, feeling her soft hands on her cheek in a gentle caress.

Ellen was thin and preoccupied now and on her feet from morning until long after the plantation was asleep.

The demands of the Confederate commissary were growing heavier by the month, and hers was the task of making Tara produce.

Even Gerald was busy, for the first time in many years, for he could get no overseer to take Jonas Wilkerson’s place and he was riding his own acres.

With Ellen too busy for more than a good-night kiss and Gerald in the fields all day, Scarlett found Tara boring.

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Even her sisters were taken up with their own concerns.

Suellen had now come to an “understanding” with Frank Kennedy and sang “When This Cruel War Is Over” with an arch meaning that Scarlett found well-nigh unendurable, and Careen was too wrapped up in dreams of Brent Tarleton to be interesting company.

Though Scarlett always went home to Tara with a happy heart, she was never sorry when the inevitable letters came from Pitty and Melanie, begging her to return.

Ellen always sighed at these times, saddened by the thought of her oldest daughter and her only grandchild leaving her.

“But I mustn’t be selfish and keep you here when you are needed to nurse in Atlanta,” she said.

“Only—only, my darling, it seems that I never get the time to talk to you and to feel that you are my own little girl again before you are gone from me.”

“I’m always your little girl,” Scarlett would say and bury her head upon Ellen’s breast, her guilt rising up to accuse her.

She did not tell her mother that it was the dancing and the beaux which drew her back to Atlanta and not the service of the Confederacy.

There were many things she kept from her mother these days.

But, most of all, she kept secret the fact that Rhett Butler called frequently at Aunt Pittypat’s house.

********

During the months that followed the bazaar, Rhett called whenever he was in town, taking Scarlett riding in his carriage, escorting her to danceables and bazaars and waiting outside the hospital to drive her home.

She lost her fear of his betraying her secret, but there always lurked in the back of her mind the disquieting memory that he had seen her at her worst and knew the truth about Ashley.

It was this knowledge that checked her tongue when he annoyed her.

And he annoyed her frequently.

He was in his mid-thirties, older than any beau she had ever had, and she was as helpless as a child to control and handle him as she had handled beaux nearer her own age.

He always looked as if nothing had ever surprised him and much had amused him and, when he had gotten her into a speechless temper, she felt that she amused him more than anything in the world.

Frequently she flared into open wrath under his expert baiting, for she had Gerald’s Irish temper along with the deceptive sweetness of face she had inherited from Ellen.

Heretofore she had never bothered to control her temper except in Ellen’s presence.

Now it was painful to have to choke back words for fear of his amused grin.

If only he would ever lose his temper too, then she would not feel at such a disadvantage.

After tilts with him from which she seldom emerged the victor, she vowed he was impossible, ill bred and no gentleman and she would have nothing more to do with him.

But sooner or later, he returned to Atlanta, called, presumably on Aunt Pitty, and presented Scarlett, with overdone gallantry, a box of bonbons he had brought her from Nassau.

Or preempted a seat by her at a musicale or claimed her at a dance, and she was usually so amused by his bland impudence that she laughed and overlooked his past misdeeds until the next occurred.

For all his exasperating qualities, she grew to look forward to his calls.

There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known.

There was something breath-taking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him.

“It’s almost like I was in love with him!” she thought, bewildered.

“But I’m not and I just can’t understand it.”

But the exciting feeling persisted.

When he came to call, his complete masculinity made Aunt Pitty’s well-bred and ladylike house seem small, pale and a trifle fusty.

Scarlett was not the only member of the household who reacted strangely and unwillingly to his presence, for he kept Aunt Pitty in a flutter and a ferment.

While Pitty knew Ellen would disapprove of his calls on her daughter, and knew also that the edict of Charleston banning him from polite society was not one to be lightly disregarded, she could no more resist his elaborate compliments and hand kissing than a fly can resist a honey pot.

Moreover, he usually brought her some little gift from Nassau which he assured her he had purchased especially for her and blockaded in at risk of his life—papers of pins and needles, buttons, spools of silk thread and hairpins.

It was almost impossible to obtain these small luxuries now—ladies were wearing hand-whittled wooden hairpins and covering acorns with cloth for buttons—and Pitty lacked the moral stamina to refuse them.

Besides, she had a childish love of surprise packages and could not resist opening his gifts.

And, having once opened them, she did not feel that she could refuse them.

Then, having accepted his gifts, she could not summon courage enough to tell him his reputation made it improper for him to call on three lone women who had no male protector.

Aunt Pitty always felt that she needed a male protector when Rhett Butler was in the house.

“I don’t know what it is about him,” she would sigh helplessly.

“But—well, I do think he’d be a nice, attractive man if I could just feel that—well, that deep down in his heart he respected women.”

Since the return of her wedding ring, Melanie had felt that Rhett was a gentleman of rare refinement and delicacy and she was shocked at this remark.

He was unfailingly courteous to her, but she was a little timid with him, largely because she was shy with any man she had not known from childhood.

Secretly she was very sorry for him, a feeling which would have amused him had he been aware of it.

She was certain that some romantic sorrow had blighted his life and made him hard and bitter, and she felt that what he needed was the love of a good woman.

In all her sheltered life she had never seen evil and could scarcely credit its existence, and when gossip whispered things about Rhett and the girl in Charleston, she was shocked and unbelieving.

And, instead of turning her against him, it only made her more timidly gracious toward him because of her indignation at what she fancied was a gross injustice done him.

Scarlett silently agreed with Aunt Pitty.

She, too, felt that he had no respect for any woman, unless perhaps for Melanie.

She still felt unclothed every time his eyes ran up and down her figure.

It was not that he ever said anything.

Then she could have scorched him with hot words.

It was the bold way his eyes looked out of his swarthy face with a displeasing air of insolence, as if all women were his property to be enjoyed in his own good time.

Only with Melanie was this look absent.

There was never that cool look of appraisal, never mockery in his eyes, when he looked at Melanie; and there was an especial note in his voice when he spoke to her, courteous, respectful, anxious to be of service.

“I don’t see why you’re so much nicer to her than to me,” said Scarlett petulantly, one afternoon when Melanie and Pitty had retired to take their naps and she was alone with him.

For an hour she had watched Rhett hold the yarn Melanie was winding for knitting, had noted the blank inscrutable expression when Melanie talked at length and with pride of Ashley and his promotion.

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Scarlett knew Rhett had no exalted opinion of Ashley and cared nothing at all about the fact that he had been made a major.

Yet he made polite replies and murmured the correct things about Ashley’s gallantry.

And if I so much as mention Ashley’s name, she had thought irritably, he cocks his eyebrow up and smiles that nasty, knowing smile!

“I’m much prettier than she is,” she continued, “and I don’t see why you’re nicer to her.”

“Dare I hope that you are jealous?”

“Oh, don’t presume!”

“Another hope crushed.

If I am ‘nicer’ to Mrs. Wilkes, it is because she deserves it.

She is one of the very few kind, sincere and unselfish persons I have ever known.

But perhaps you have failed to note these qualities.

And moreover, for all her youth, she is one of the few great ladies I have ever been privileged to know.”

“Do you mean to say you don’t think I’m a great lady, too?”

“I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you were no lady at all.”

“Oh, if you are going to be hateful and rude enough to bring that up again!

How can you hold that bit of childish temper against me?

That was so long ago and I’ve grown up since then and I’d forget all about it if you weren’t always harping and hinting about it.”

“I don’t think it was childish temper and I don’t believe you’ve changed.

You are just as capable now as then of throwing vases if you don’t get your own way.

But you usually get your way now.

And so there’s no necessity for broken bric-a-brac.”

“Oh, you are—I wish I was a man!

I’d call you out and—”

“And get killed for your pains.

I can drill a dime at fifty yards.

Better stick to your own weapons—dimples, vases and the like.”

“You are just a rascal.”

“Do you expect me to fly into a rage at that?

I am sorry to disappoint you.

You can’t make me mad by calling me names that are true.

Certainly I’m a rascal, and why not?

It’s a free country and a man may be a rascal if he chooses.

It’s only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black at heart but trying to hide it, who become enraged when called by their right names.”

She was helpless before his calm smile and his drawling remarks, for she had never before met anyone who was so completely impregnable.

Her weapons of scorn, coldness and abuse blunted in her hands, for nothing she could say would shame him.

It had been her experience that the liar was the hottest to defend his veracity, the coward his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and the cad his honor.

But not Rhett.

He admitted everything and laughed and dared her to say more.

He came and went during these months, arriving unheralded and leaving without saying good-by.

Scarlett never discovered just what business brought him to Atlanta, for few other blockaders found it necessary to come so far away from the coast.

They landed their cargoes at Wilmington or Charleston, where they were met by swarms of merchants and speculators from all over the South who assembled to buy blockaded goods at auction.

It would have pleased her to think that he made these trips to see her, but even her abnormal vanity refused to believe this.

If he had ever once made love to her, seemed jealous of the other men who crowded about her, even tried to hold her hand or begged for a picture or a handkerchief to cherish, she would have thought triumphantly he had been caught by her charms.

But he remained annoyingly unloverlike and, worst of all, seemed to see through all her maneuverings to bring him to his knees.

Whenever he came to town, there was a feminine fluttering.

Not only did the romantic aura of the dashing blockader hang about him but there was also the titillating element of the wicked and the forbidden.

He had such a bad reputation!

And every time the matrons of Atlanta gathered together to gossip, his reputation grew worse, which only made him all the more glamorous to the young girls.

As most of them were quite innocent, they had heard little more than that he was “quite loose with women”—and exactly how a man went about the business of being “loose” they did not know.

They also heard whispers that no girl was safe with him.

With such a reputation, it was strange that he had never so much as kissed the hand of an unmarried girl since he first appeared in Atlanta.

But that only served to make him more mysterious and more exciting.

Outside of the army heroes, he was the most talked-about man in Atlanta.

Everyone knew in detail how he had been expelled from West Point for drunkenness and “something about women.”

That terrific scandal concerning the Charleston girl he had compromised and the brother he had killed was public property.

Correspondence with Charleston friends elicited the further information that his father, a charming old gentleman with an iron will and a ramrod for a backbone, had cast him out without a penny when he was twenty and even stricken his name from the family Bible.

After that he had wandered to California in the gold rush of 1849 and thence to South America and Cuba, and the reports of his activities in these parts were none too savory.

Scrapes about women, several shootings, gun running to the revolutionists in Central America and, worst of all, professional gambling were included in his career, as Atlanta heard it.

There was hardly a family in Georgia who could not own to their sorrow at least one male member or relative who gambled, losing money, houses, land and slaves.

But that was different.

A man could gamble himself to poverty and still be a gentleman, but a professional gambler could never be anything but an outcast.

Had it not been for the upset conditions due to the war and his own services to the Confederate government, Rhett Butler would never have been received in Atlanta.

But now, even the most strait laced felt that patriotism called upon them to be more broad minded.

The more sentimental were inclined to the view that the black sheep of the Butler family had repented of his evil ways and was making an attempt to atone for his sins.

So the ladies felt in duty bound to stretch a point, especially in the case of so intrepid a blockader.

Everyone knew now that the fate of the Confederacy rested as much upon the skill of the blockade boats in eluding the Yankee fleet as it did upon the soldiers at the front.

Rumor had it that Captain Butler was one of the best pilots in the South and that he was reckless and utterly without nerves.

Reared in Charleston, he knew every inlet, creek, shoal and rock of the Carolina coast near that port, and he was equally at home in the waters around Wilmington.

He had never lost a boat or even been forced to dump a cargo.

At the onset of the war, he had emerged from obscurity with enough money to buy a small swift boat and now, when blockaded goods realized two thousand per cent on each cargo, he owned four boats.

He had good pilots and paid them well, and they slid out of Charleston and Wilmington on dark nights, bearing cotton for Nassau, England and Canada.

The cotton mills of England were standing idle and the workers were starving, and any blockader who could outwit the Yankee fleet could command his own price in Liverpool.

Rhett’s boats were singularly lucky both in taking out cotton for the Confederacy and bringing in the war materials for which the South was desperate.

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Yes, the ladies felt they could forgive and forget a great many things for such a brave man.

He was a dashing figure and one that people turned to look at.

He spent money freely, rode a wild black stallion, and wore clothes which were always the height of style and tailoring.

The latter in itself was enough to attract attention to him, for the uniforms of the soldiers were dingy and worn now and the civilians, even when turned out in their best, showed skillful patching and darning.

Scarlett thought she had never seen such elegant pants as he wore, fawn colored, shepherd’s plaid, and checked.

As for his waistcoats, they were indescribably handsome, especially the white watered-silk one with tiny rosebuds embroidered on it.

And he wore these garments with a still more elegant air as though unaware of their glory.

There were few ladies who could resist his charms when he chose to exert them, and finally even Mrs. Merriwether unbent and invited him to Sunday dinner.

Maybelle Merriwether was to marry her little Zouave when he got his next furlough, and she cried every time she thought of it, for she had set her heart on marrying in a white satin dress and there was no white satin in the Confederacy.

Nor could she borrow a dress, for the satin wedding dresses of years past had all gone into the making of battle flags.

Useless for the patriotic Mrs. Merriwether to upbraid her daughter and point out that homespun was the proper bridal attire for a Confederate bride.

Maybelle wanted satin.

She was willing, even proud, to go without hairpins and buttons and nice shoes and candy and tea for the sake of the Cause, but she wanted a satin wedding dress.

Rhett, hearing of this from Melanie, brought in from England yards and yards of gleaming white satin and a lace veil and presented them to her as a wedding gift.

He did it in such a way that it was unthinkable to even mention paying him for them, and Maybelle was so delighted she almost kissed him.

Mrs. Merriwether knew that so expensive a gift—and a gift of clothing at that—was highly improper, but she could think of no way of refusing when Rhett told her in the most florid language that nothing was too good to deck the bride of one of our brave heroes.

So Mrs. Merriwether invited him to dinner, feeling that this concession more than paid for the gift.

He not only brought Maybelle the satin but he was able to give excellent hints on the making of the wedding dress.

Hoops in Paris were wider this season and skirts were shorter.

They were no longer ruffled but were gathered up in scalloped festoons, showing braided petticoats beneath.

He said, too, that he had seen no pantalets on the streets, so he imagined they were “out.”

Afterwards, Mrs. Merriwether told Mrs. Elsing she feared that if she had given him any encouragement at all, he would have told her exactly what kind of drawers were being worn by Parisiennes.

Had he been less obviously masculine, his ability to recall details of dresses, bonnets and coiffures would have been put down as the rankest effeminacy.

The ladies always felt a little odd when they besieged him with questions about styles, but they did it nevertheless.

They were as isolated from the world of fashion as shipwrecked mariners, for few books of fashion came through the blockade.

For all they knew the ladies of France might be shaving their heads and wearing coonskin caps, so Rhett’s memory for furbelows was an excellent substitute for Godey’s Lady’s Book.

He could and did notice details so dear to feminine hearts, and after each trip abroad he could be found in the center of a group of ladies, telling that bonnets were smaller this year and perched higher, covering most of the top of the head, that plumes and not flowers were being used to trim them, that the Empress of France had abandoned the chignon for evening wear and had her hair piled almost on the top of her head, showing all of her ears, and that evening frocks were shockingly low again.

********

For some months, he was the most popular and romantic figure the town knew, despite his previous reputation, despite the faint rumors that he was engaged not only in blockading but in speculating on foodstuffs, too.

People who did not like him said that after every trip he made to Atlanta, prices jumped five dollars.

But even with this under-cover gossip seeping about, he could have retained his popularity had he considered it worth retaining.

Instead, it seemed as though, after trying the company of the staid and patriotic citizens and winning their respect and grudging liking, something perverse in him made him go out of his way to affront them and show them that his conduct had been only a masquerade and one which no longer amused him.

It was as though he bore an impersonal contempt for everyone and everything in the South, the Confederacy in particular, and took no pains to conceal it.

It was his remarks about the Confederacy that made Atlanta look at him first in bewilderment, then coolly and then with hot rage.

Even before 1862 passed into 1863, men were bowing to him with studied frigidity and women were beginning to draw their daughters to their sides when he appeared at a gathering.

He seemed to take pleasure not only in affronting the sincere and red-hot loyalties of Atlanta but in presenting himself in the worst possible light.

When well-meaning people complimented him on his bravery in running the blockade, he blandly replied that he was always frightened when in danger, as frightened as were the brave boys at the front.

Everyone knew there had never been a cowardly Confederate soldier and they found this statement peculiarly irritating.

He always referred to the soldiers as “our brave boys” or “our heroes in gray” and did it in such a way as to convey the utmost in insult.

When daring young ladies, hoping for a flirtation, thanked him for being one of the heroes who fought for them, he bowed and declared that such was not the case, for he would do the same thing for Yankee women if the same amount of money were involved.

Since Scarlett’s first meeting with him in Atlanta on the night of the bazaar, he had talked with her in this manner, but now there was a thinly veiled note of mockery in his conversations with everyone.

When praised for his services to the Confederacy, he unfailingly replied that blockading was a business with him.

If he could make as much money out of government contracts, he would say, picking out with his eyes those who had government contracts, then he would certainly abandon the hazards of blockading and take to selling shoddy cloth, sanded sugar, spoiled flour and rotten leather to the Confederacy.

Most of his remarks were unanswerable, which made them all the worse.

There had already been minor scandals about those holding government contracts.

Letters from men at the front complained constantly of shoes that wore out in a week, gunpowder that would not ignite, harness that snapped at any strain, meat that was rotten and flour that was full of weevils.

Atlanta people tried to think that the men who sold such stuff to the government must be contract holders from Alabama or Virginia or Tennessee, and not Georgians.

For did not the Georgia contract holders include men from the very best families?

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Were they not the first to contribute to hospital funds and to the aid of soldiers’ orphans?

Were they not the first to cheer at “Dixie” and the most rampant seekers, in oratory at least, for Yankee blood?

The full tide of fury against those profiteering on government contracts had not yet risen, and Rhett’s words were taken merely as evidence of his own bad breeding.

He not only affronted the town with insinuations of venality on the part of men in high places and slurs on the courage of the men in the field, but he took pleasure in tricking the dignified citizenry into embarrassing situations.

He could no more resist pricking the conceits, the hypocrisies and the flamboyant patriotism of those about him than a small boy can resist putting a pin into a balloon.

He neatly deflated the pompous and exposed the ignorant and the bigoted, and he did it in such subtle ways, drawing his victims out by his seemingly courteous interest, that they never were quite certain what had happened until they stood exposed as windy, high flown and slightly ridiculous.

During the months when the town accepted him, Scarlett had been under no illusions about him.

She knew that his elaborate gallantries and his florid speeches were all done with his tongue in his cheek.

She knew that he was acting the part of the dashing and patriotic blockade runner simply because it amused him.

Sometimes he seemed to her like the County boys with whom she had grown up, the wild Tarleton twins with their obsession for practical jokes; the devil-inspired Fontaines, teasing, mischievous; the Calverts who would sit up all night planning hoaxes.

But there was a difference, for beneath Rhett’s seeming lightness there was something malicious, almost sinister in its suave brutality.

Though she was thoroughly aware of his insincerity, she much preferred him in the role of the romantic blockader.

For one thing, it made her own situation in associating with him so much easier than it had been at first.

So, she was intensely annoyed when he dropped his masquerade and set out apparently upon a deliberate campaign to alienate Atlanta’s good will.

It annoyed her because it seemed foolish and also because some of the harsh criticism directed at him fell on her.

It was at Mrs. Elsing’s silver musicale for the benefit of the convalescents that Rhett signed his final warrant of ostracism.

That afternoon the Elsing home was crowded with soldiers on leave and men from the hospitals, members of the Home Guard and the militia unit, and matrons, widows and young girls.

Every chair in the house was occupied, and even the long winding stair was packed with guests.

The large cut-glass bowl held at the door by the Elsings’ butler had been emptied twice of its burden of silver coins.

That in itself was enough to make the affair a success, for now a dollar in silver was worth sixty dollars in Confederate paper money.

Every girl with any pretense to accomplishments had sung or played the piano, and the tableaux vivants had been greeted with flattering applause.

Scarlett was much pleased with herself, for not only had she and Melanie rendered a touching duet, “When the Dew Is on the Blossom,” followed as an encore by the more sprightly “Oh, Lawd, Ladies, Don’t Mind Stephen!” but she had also been chosen to represent the Spirit of the Confederacy in the last tableau.

She had looked most fetching, wearing a modestly draped Greek robe of white cheesecloth girdled with red and blue and holding the Stars and Bars in one hand, while with the other she stretched out to the kneeling Captain Carey Ashburn, of Alabama, the gold-hilted saber which had belonged to Charles and his father.

When her tableau was over, she could not help seeking Rhett’s eyes to see if he had appreciated the pretty picture she made.

With a feeling of exasperation, she saw that he was in an argument and probably had not even noticed her.

Scarlett could see by the faces of the group surrounding him that they were infuriated by what he was saying.

She made her way toward them and, in one of those odd silences which sometimes fall on a gathering, she heard Willie Guinan, of the militia outfit, say plainly: “Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?”

“If you were run over by a railroad train, your death wouldn’t sanctify the railroad company, would it?” asked Rhett, and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information.

“Sir,” said Willie, his voice shaking, “if we were not under this roof—”

“I tremble to think what would happen,” said Rhett.

“For, of course, your bravery is too well known.”

Willie went scarlet and all conversation ceased.

Everyone was embarrassed.

Willie was strong and healthy and of military age and yet he wasn’t at the front.

Of course, he was the only boy his mother had and, after all, somebody had to be in the militia to protect the state.

But there were a few irreverent snickers from convalescent officers when Rhett spoke of bravery.

“Oh, why doesn’t he keep his mouth shut!” thought Scarlett indignantly.

“He’s simply spoiling the whole party!”

Dr. Meade’s brows were thunderous.

“Nothing may be sacred to you, young man,” he said, in the voice he always used when making speeches.

“But there are many things sacred to the patriotic men and ladies of the South.

And the freedom of our land from the usurper is one and States’ Rights is another and—”

Rhett looked lazy and his voice had a silky, almost bored, note.

“All wars are sacred,” he said.

“To those who have to fight them.

If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight?

But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war.

And that is money.

All wars are in reality money squabbles.

But so few people ever realize it.

Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and fine words from stay-at-home orators.

Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’

Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!’”

“What on earth has the Pope to do with it?” thought Scarlett.

“Or Christ’s tomb, either?”

But as she hurried toward the incensed group, she saw Rhett bow jauntily and start toward the doorway through the crowd.

She started after him but Mrs. Elsing caught her skirt and held her.

“Let him go,” she said in a clear voice that carried throughout the intensely quiet room.

“Let him go.

He is a traitor, a speculator!

He is a viper that we have nursed to our bosoms!”

Rhett, standing in the hall, his hat in his hand, heard as he was intended to hear and, turning, surveyed the room for a moment.

He looked pointedly at Mrs. Elsing’s flat bosom, grinned suddenly and, bowing, made his exit.

********

Mrs. Merriwether rode home in Aunt Pitty’s carriage, and scarcely had the four ladies seated themselves when she exploded.

“There now, Pittypat Hamilton! I hope you are satisfied!”

“With what?” cried Pitty, apprehensively.

“With the conduct of that wretched Butler man you’ve been harboring.”

Pittypat fluttered, too upset by the accusation to recall that Mrs. Merriwether had also been Rhett Butler’s hostess on several occasions.

Scarlett and Melanie thought of this, but bred to politeness to their elders, refrained from remarking on the matter.

Instead they studiously looked down at their mittened hands.

“He insulted us all and the Confederacy too,” said Mrs. Merriwether, and her stout bust heaved violently beneath its glittering passementerie trimmings.

“Saying that we were fighting for money!

Saying that our leaders had lied to us!

He should be put in jail.

Yes, he should.

I shall speak to Dr. Meade about it.

If Mr. Merriwether were only alive, he’d tend to him!

Now, Pitty Hamilton, you listen to me.

You mustn’t ever let that scamp come into your house again!”

“Oh,” mumbled Pitty, helplessly, looking as if she wished she were dead.

She looked appealingly at the two girls who kept their eyes cast down and then hopefully toward Uncle Peter’s erect back.

She knew he was listening attentively to every word and she hoped he would turn and take a hand in the conversation, as he frequently did.

She hoped he would say: “Now, Miss Dolly, you let Miss Pitty be,” but Peter made no move.

He disapproved heartily of Rhett Butler and poor Pitty knew it.

She sighed and said: “Well, Dolly, if you think—”

“I do think,” returned Mrs. Merriwether firmly.

“I can’t imagine what possessed you to receive him in the first place.

After this afternoon, there won’t be a decent home in town that he’ll be welcome in.

Do get up some gumption and forbid him your house.”

She turned a sharp eye on the girls.

“I hope you two are marking my words,” she continued, “for it’s partly your fault, being so pleasant to him.

Just tell him politely but firmly that his presence and his disloyal talk are distinctly unwelcome at your house.”

By this time Scarlett was boiling, ready to rear like a horse at the touch of a strange rough hand on its bridle.

But she was afraid to speak.

She could not risk Mrs. Merriwether writing another letter to her mother.

“You old buffalo!” she thought, her face crimson with suppressed fury.

“How heavenly it would be to tell you just what I think of you and your bossy ways!”

“I never thought to live long enough to hear such disloyal words spoken of our Cause,” went on Mrs. Merriwether, by this time in a ferment of righteous anger.

“Any man who does not think our Cause is just and holy should be hanged!

I don’t want to hear of you two girls ever even speaking to him again—For Heaven’s sake, Melly, what ails you?”

Melanie was white and her eyes were enormous.

“I will speak to him again,” she said in a low voice.

“I will not be rude to him.

I will not forbid him the house.”

Mrs. Merriwether’s breath went out of her lungs as explosively as though she had been punched.

Aunt Pitty’s fat mouth popped open and Uncle Peter turned to stare.

“Now, why didn’t I have the gumption to say that?” thought Scarlett, jealousy mixing with admiration.

“How did that little rabbit ever get up spunk enough to stand up to old lady Merriwether?”

Melanie’s hands were shaking but she went on hurriedly, as though fearing her courage would fail her if she delayed.

“I won’t be rude to him because of what he said, because—It was rude of him to say it out loud—most ill advised—but it’s—it’s what Ashley thinks.

And I can’t forbid the house to a man who thinks what my husband thinks.

It would be unjust.”

Mrs. Merriwether’s breath had come back and she charged.

“Melly Hamilton, I never heard such a lie in all my life!

There was never a Wilkes who was a coward—”

“I never said Ashley was a coward,” said Melanie, her eyes beginning to flash.

“I said he thinks what Captain Butler thinks, only he expresses it in different words.

And he doesn’t go around saying it at musicales, I hope.

But he has written it to me.”

Scarlett’s guilty conscience stirred as she tried to recall what Ashley might have written that would lead Melanie to make such a statement, but most of the letters she had read had gone out of her head as soon as she finished reading them.

She believed Melanie had simply taken leave of her senses.

“Ashley wrote me that we should not be fighting the Yankees.

And that we have been betrayed into it by statesmen and orators mouthing catchwords and prejudices,” said Melly rapidly.

“He said nothing in the world was worth what this war was going to do to us.

He said there wasn’t anything at all to glory—it was just misery and dirt.”

“Oh!

That letter,” thought Scarlett.

“Was that what he meant?”

“I don’t believe it,” said Mrs. Merriwether firmly.

“You misunderstood his meaning.”

“I never misunderstand Ashley,” Melanie replied quietly, though her lips were trembling.

“I understand him perfectly.

He meant exactly what Captain Butler meant, only he didn’t say it in a rude way.”

“You should be ashamed of yourself, comparing a fine man like Ashley Wilkes to a scoundrel like Captain Butler!

I suppose you, too, think the Cause is nothing!”

“I—I don’t know what I think,” Melanie began uncertainly, her fire deserting her and panic at her outspokenness taking hold of her.

“I—I’d die for the Cause, like Ashley would.

But—I mean—I mean, I’ll let the men folks do the thinking, because they are so much smarter.”

“I never heard the like,” snorted Mrs. Merriwether.

“Stop, Uncle Peter, you’re driving past my house!”

Uncle Peter, preoccupied with the conversation behind him, had driven past the Merriwether carriage block and he backed up the horse.

Mrs. Merriwether alighted, her bonnet ribbons shaking like sails in a storm.

“You’ll be sorry,” she said.

Uncle Peter whipped up the horse.

“You young misses ought ter tek shame, gittin’ Miss Pitty in a state,” he scolded.

“I’m not in a state,” replied Pitty, surprisingly, for less strain than this had frequently brought on fainting fits.

“Melly, honey, I knew you were doing it just to take up for me and, really, I was glad to see somebody take Dolly down a peg.

She’s so bossy.

How did you have the courage?

But do you think you should have said that about Ashley?”

“But it’s true,” answered Melanie and she began to cry softly.

“And I’m not ashamed that he thinks that way.

He thinks the war is all wrong but he’s willing to fight and die anyway, and that takes lots more courage than fighting for something you think is right.”

“Lawd, Miss Melly, doan cry hyah on Peachtree Street,” groaned Uncle Peter, hastening his horse’s pace.

“Folks’ll talk sumpin’ scan’lous.

Wait till us gits home.”

Scarlett said nothing.

She did not even squeeze the hand that Melanie had inserted into her palm for comfort.

She had read Ashley’s letters for only one purpose—to assure herself that he still loved her.

Now Melanie had given a new meaning to passages in the letters which Scarlett’s eyes had barely seen.

It shocked her to realize that anyone as absolutely perfect as Ashley could have any thought in common with such a reprobate as Rhett Butler.

She thought: “They both see the truth of this war, but Ashley is willing to die about it and Rhett isn’t.

I think that shows Rhett’s good sense.”

She paused a moment, horror struck that she could have such a thought about Ashley.

“They both see the same unpleasant truth, but Rhett likes to look it in the face and enrage people by talking about it—and Ashley can hardly bear to face it.”

It was very bewildering.