Gone with the Wind (127 page)

“India!” said Melanie warningly, her hands clenching on her sewing.

“I think I know my husband better than you do,” said Scarlett, the prospect of a quarrel, the first open quarrel she had ever had with India, making her spirits rise and her nervousness depart. Melanie's eyes caught India's and reluctantly India closed her lips. But almost instantly she spoke again and her voice was cold with hate.

“You make me sick, Scarlett O'Hara, talking about being protected! You don't care about being protected! If
you did you'd never have exposed yourself as you have done all these months, prissing yourself about this town, showing yourself off to strange men, hoping they'll admire you! What happened to you this afternoon was just what you deserved and if there was any justice you'd have gotten worse.”

“Oh, India, hush!” cried Melanie.

“Let her talk,” cried Scarlett. “I'm enjoying it. I always knew she hated me and she was too much of a hypocrite to admit it. If she thought anyone would admire her, she'd be walking the streets naked from dawn till dark.”

India was on her feet, her lean body quivering with insult.

“I do hate you,” she said in a clear but trembling voice. “But it hasn't been hypocrisy that's kept me quiet. It's something you can't understand, not possessing any—any common courtesy, common good breeding. It's the realization that if all of us don't hang together and submerge our own small hates, we can't expect to beat the Yankees. But you—you—you've done all you could to lower the prestige of decent people—working and bringing shame on a good husband, giving Yankees and riffraff the right to laugh at us and make insulting remarks about our lack of gentility. Yankees don't know that you aren't one of us and have never been. Yankees haven't sense enough to know that you haven't any gentility. And when you've ridden about the woods exposing yourself to attack, you've exposed every well-behaved woman in town to attack by putting temptation in the ways of darkies and mean white trash. And you've put our men folks' lives in danger because they've got to—”

“My God, India!” cried Melanie and even in her wrath, Scarlett was stunned to hear Melanie take the
Lord's name in vain. “You must hush! She doesn't know and she—you must hush! You promised—”

“Oh, girls!” pleaded Miss Pittypat, her lips trembling.

“What don't I know?” Scarlett was on her feet, furious, facing the coldly blazing India and the imploring Melanie.

“Guinea hens,” said Archie suddenly and his voice was contemptuous. Before anyone could rebuke him, his grizzled head went up sharply and he rose swiftly. “Somebody comin' up the walk. 'Tain't Mr. Wilkes neither. Cease your cackle.”

There was male authority in his voice and the women stood suddenly silent, anger fading swiftly from their faces as he stumped across the room to the door.

“Who's thar?” he questioned before the caller even knocked.

“Captain Butler. Let me in.”

Melanie was across the floor so swiftly that her hoops swayed up violently, revealing her pantalets to the knees, and before Archie could put his hand on the knob she flung the door open. Rhett Butler stood in the doorway, his black slouch hat low over his eyes, the wild wind whipping his cape about him in snapping folds. For once his good manners had deserted him. He neither took off his hat nor spoke to the others in the room. He had eyes for no one but Melanie and he spoke abruptly without greeting.

“Where have they gone? Tell me quickly. It's life or death.”

Scarlett and Pitty, startled and bewildered, looked at each other in wonderment and, like a lean old cat, India streaked across the room to Melanie's side.

“Don't tell him anything,” she cried swiftly. “He's a spy, a Scallawag!”

Rhett did not even favor her with a glance.

“Quickly, Mrs. Wilkes! There may still be time.”

Melanie seemed in a paralysis of terror and only stared into his face.

“What on earth—” began Scarlett.

“Shet yore mouth,” directed Archie briefly. “You too, Miss Melly. Git the hell out of here, you damned Scallawag.”

“No, Archie, no!” cried Melanie and she put a shaking hand on Rhett's arm as though to protect him from Archie. “What has happened? How did—how did you know?”

On Rhett's dark face impatience fought with courtesy.

“Good God, Mrs. Wilkes, they've all been under suspicion since the beginning—only they've been too clever—until tonight! How do I know? I was playing poker with two drunken Yankee captains and they let it out. The Yankees knew there'd be trouble tonight and they've prepared for it. The fools have walked into a trap.”

For a moment it was as though Melanie swayed under the impact of a heavy blow and Rhett's arm went around her waist to steady her.

“Don't tell him! He's trying to trap you!” cried India, glaring at Rhett. “Didn't you hear him say he'd been with Yankee officers tonight?”

Still Rhett did not look at her. His eyes were bent insistingly on Melanie's white face.

“Tell me. Where did they go? Have they a meeting place?”

Despite her fear and incomprehension, Scarlett thought she had never seen a blanker, more expressionless face than Rhett's but evidently Melanie saw something
else, something that made her give her trust. She straightened her small body away from the steadying arm and said quietly but with a voice that shook:

“Out the Decatur road near Shantytown. They meet in the cellar of the old Sullivan plantation—the one that's half-burned.”

“Thank you. I'll ride fast. When the Yankees come here, none of you know anything.”

He was gone so swiftly, his black cape melting into the night, that they could hardly realize he had been there at all until they heard the spattering of gravel and the mad pounding of a horse going off at full gallop.

“The Yankees coming here?” cried Pitty and, her small feet turning under her, she collapsed on the sofa, too frightened for tears.

“What's it all about? What did he mean? If you don't tell me I'll go crazy!” Scarlett laid hands on Melanie and shook her violently as if by force she could shake an answer from her.

“Mean? It means you've probably been the cause of Ashley's and Mr. Kennedy's death!” In spite of the agony of fear there was a note of triumph in India's voice. “Stop shaking Melly. She's going to faint.”

“No, I'm not,” whispered Melanie, clutching the back of a chair.

“My God, my God! I don't understand! Kill Ashley? Please, somebody tell me—”

Archie's voice, like a dusty hinge, cut through Scarlett's words.

“Set down,” he ordered briefly. “Pick up yore sewin'. Sew like nothin' has happened. For all we know, the Yankees might have been spyin' on this house since sundown. Set down, I say, and sew.”

Trembling they obeyed, even Pitty picking up a sock and holding it in shaking fingers while her eyes, wide as a frightened child's, went around the circle for an explanation.

“Where is Ashley? What has happened to him, Melly?” cried Scarlett.

“Where's your husband? Aren't you interested in him?” India's pale eyes blazed with insane malice as she crumpled and straightened the torn towel she had been mending.

“India, please!” Melanie had mastered her voice but her white, shaken face and tortured eyes showed the strain under which she was laboring. “Scarlett, perhaps we should have told you but—but—you had been through so much this afternoon that we—that Frank didn't think—and you were always so outspoken against the Klan—”

“The Klan—”

At first, Scarlett spoke the word as if she had never heard it before and had no comprehension of its meaning and then:

“The Klan!” she almost screamed it. “Ashley isn't in the Klan! Frank can't be! Oh, he promised me!”

“Of course, Mr. Kennedy is in the Klan and Ashley, too, and all the men we know,” cried India. “They are men, aren't they? And white men and Southerners. You should have been proud of him instead of making him sneak out as though it were something shameful and—”

“You all have known all along and I didn't—”

“We were afraid it would upset you,” said Melanie sorrowfully.

“Then that's where they go when they're supposed to be at the political meetings? Oh, he promised me! Now,
the Yankees will come and take my mills and the store and put him in jail—oh, what did Rhett Butler mean?”

India's eyes met Melanie's in wild fear. Scarlett rose, flinging her sewing down.

“If you don't tell me, I'm going downtown and find out. I'll ask everybody I see until I find—”

“Set,” said Archie, fixing her with his eye. “I'll tell you. Because you went gallivantin' this afternoon and got yoreself into trouble through yore own fault, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Kennedy and the other men are out tonight to kill that thar nigger and that thar white man, if they catch them, and wipe out that whole Shantytown settlement. And if what that Scallawag says is true, the Yankees suspected sumpin' or got wind somehow and they've sont out troops to lay for them. And our men have walked into a trap. And if what Butler said warn't true, then he's a spy and he is goin' to turn them up to the Yankees and they'll git kilt just the same. And if he does turn them up, then I'll kill him, if it's the last deed of m' life. And if they ain't kilt, then they'll all have to light out of here for Texas and lay low and maybe never come back. It's all yore fault and thar's blood on yore hands.”

Anger wiped out the fear from Melanie's face as she saw comprehension come slowly across Scarlett's face and then horror follow swiftly. She rose and put her hand on Scarlett's shoulder.

“Another such word and you go out of this house, Archie,” she said sternly. “It's not her fault. She only did—did what she felt she had to do. And our men did what they felt they had to do. People must do what they must do. We don't all think alike or act alike and it's wrong to—to judge others by ourselves. How can you
and India say such cruel things when her husband as well as mine may be—may be—”

“Hark!” interrupted Archie softly. “Set, Ma'm. Thar's horses.”

Melanie sank into a chair, picked up one of Ashley's shirts and, bowing her head over it, unconsciously began to tear the frills into small ribbons.

The sound of hooves grew louder as horses trotted up to the house. There was the jangling of bits and the strain of leather and the sound of voices. As the hooves stopped in front of the house, one voice rose above the others in a command and the listeners heard feet going through the side yard toward the back porch. They felt that a thousand inimical eyes looked at them through the unshaded front window and the four women, with fear in their hearts, bent their heads and plied their needles. Scarlett's heart screamed in her breast: “I've killed Ashley! I've killed him!” And in that wild moment she did not even think that she might have killed Frank too. She had no room in her mind for any picture save that of Ashley, lying at the feet of Yankee cavalrymen, his fair hair dappled with blood.

As the harsh rapid knocking sounded at the door, she looked at Melanie and saw come over the small, strained face a new expression, an expression as blank as she had just seen on Rhett Butler's face, the bland blank look of a poker player bluffing a game with only two deuces.

“Archie, open the door,” she said quietly.

Slipping his knife into his boot top and loosening the pistol in his trouser band, Archie stumped over to the door and flung it open. Pitty gave a little squeak, like a mouse who feels the trap snap down, as she saw massed in the doorway, a Yankee captain and a squad of bluecoats.
But the others said nothing. Scarlett saw with the faintest feeling of relief that she knew this officer. He was Captain Tom Jaffery, one of Rhett's friends. She had sold him lumber to build his house. She knew him to be a gentleman. Perhaps, as he was a gentleman, he wouldn't drag them away to prison. He recognized her instantly and, taking off his hat, bowed, somewhat embarrassed.

“Good evening, Mrs. Kennedy. And which of you ladies is Mrs. Wilkes?”

“I am Mrs. Wilkes,” answered Melanie, rising and for all her smallness, dignity flowed from her. “And to what do I owe this intrusion?”

The eyes of the captain flickered quickly about the room, resting for an instant on each face, passing quickly from their faces to the table and hat rack as though looking for signs of male occupancy.

“I should like to speak to Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Kennedy, if you please.”

“They are not here,” said Melanie, a chill in her soft voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Don't you question Miz Wilkes' word,” said Archie, his beard bristling.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wilkes. I meant no disrespect. If you give me your word, I will not search the house.”

“You have my word. But search if you like. They are at a meeting downtown at Mr. Kennedy's store.”

“They are not at the store. There was no meeting tonight,” answered the captain grimly. “We will wait outside until they return.”

He bowed briefly and went out, closing the door behind him. Those in the house heard a sharp order, muffled
by the wind: “Surround the house. A man at each window and door.” There was a tramping of feet. Scarlett checked a start of terror as she dimly saw bearded faces peering in the windows at them. Melanie sat down and with a hand that did not tremble reached for a book on the table. It was a ragged copy of
Les Misérables,
that book which caught the fancy of the Confederate soldiers. They had read it by camp-fire light and took some grim pleasure in calling it “Lee's Miserables.” She opened it at the middle and began to read in a clear monotonous voice.

“Sew,” commanded Archie in a hoarse whisper and the three women, nerved by Melanie's cool voice, picked up their sewing and bowed their heads.