Gone With the Wind (127 page)

She wondered incuriously who it was and, when a man’s voice, resonant and drawling, rose above Pitty’s funereal whispering, she knew. Gladness and relief flooded her. It was Rhett. She had not seen him since he broke the news of Frank’s death to her, and now she knew, deep in her heart, that he was the one person who could help her tonight.

“I think she’ll see me,” Rhett’s voice floated up to her.

“But she is lying down now, Captain Butler, and won’t see anyone. Poor child, she is quite prostrated. She—”

“I think she will see me. Please tell her I am going away tomorrow and may be gone some time. It’s very important.”

“But—” fluttered Aunt Pittypat.

Scarlett ran out into the hall, observing with some astonishment that her knees were a little unsteady, and leaned over the banisters.

“I’ll be down terrectly, Rhett,” she called.

She had a glimpse of Aunt Pittypat’s plump upturned face, her eyes owlish with surprise and disapproval. Now it’ll be all over town that I conducted myself most improperly on the day of my husband’s funeral, thought Scarlett, as she hurried back to her room and began smoothing her hair. She buttoned her black basque up to the chin and pinned down the collar with Pittypat’s mourning brooch. I don’t look very pretty she thought, leaning toward the mirror, too white and scared. For a moment her hand went toward the lock box where she kept her rouge hidden but she decided against it. Poor Pittypat would be upset in earnest if she came downstairs pink and blooming. She picked up the cologne bottle and took a large mouthful, carefully rinsed her mouth and then spit into the slop jar.

She rustled down the stairs toward the two who still stood in the hall, for Pittypat had been too upset by Scarlett’s action to ask Rhett to sit down. He was decorously clad in black, his linen frilly and starched, and his manner was all that custom demanded from an old friend paying a call of sympathy on one bereaved. In fact, it was so perfect that it verged on the burlesque, though Pittypat did not see it. He was properly apologetic for disturbing Scarlett and regretted that in his rush of closing up business before leaving town he had been unable to be present at the funeral.

“Whatever possessed him to come?” wondered Scarlett. “He doesn’t mean a word he’s saying.”

“I hate to intrude on you at this time but I have a matter of business to discuss that will not wait. Something that Mr. Kennedy and I were planning—”

“I didn’t know you and Mr. Kennedy had business dealings,” said Aunt Pittypat, almost indignant that some of Frank’s activities were unknown to her.

“Mr. Kennedy was a man of wide interests,” said Rhett respectfully. “Shall we go into the parlor?”

“No!” cried Scarlett, glancing at the closed folding doors. She could still see the coffin in that room. She hoped she never had to enter it again. Pitty, for once, took a hint, although with none too good grace.

“Do use the library. I must—I must go upstairs and get out the mending. Dear me, I’ve neglected it so this last week. I declare—”

She went up the stairs with a backward look of reproach which was noticed by neither Scarlett nor Rhett. He stood aside to let her pass before him into the library.

“What business did you and Frank have?” she questioned abruptly.

He came closer and whispered. “None at all. I just wanted to get Miss Pitty out of the way.” He paused as he leaned over her. “It’s no good, Scarlett.”

“What?”

“The cologne.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m sure you do. You’ve been drinking pretty heavily.”

“Well, what if I have? Is it any of your business?”

“The soul of courtesy, even in the depths of sorrow. Don’t drink alone, Scarlett. People always find it out and it ruins the reputation. And besides, it’s a bad business, this drinking alone. What’s the matter, honey?”

He led her to the rosewood sofa and she sat down in silence.

“May I close the doors?”

She knew if Mammy saw the closed doors she would be scandalized and would lecture and grumble about it for days, but it would be still worse if Mammy should overhear this discussion of drinking, especially in light of the missing brandy bottle. She nodded and Rhett drew the sliding doors together. When he came back and sat down beside her, his dark eyes alertly searching her face, the pall of death receded before the vitality he radiated and the room seemed pleasant and home-like again, the lamps rosy and warm.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

No one in the world could say that foolish word of endearment as caressingly as Rhett, even when he was joking, but he did not look as if he were joking now. She raised tormented eyes to his face and somehow found comfort in the blank inscrutability she saw there. She did not know why this should be, for he was such an unpredictable, callous person. Perhaps it was because, as he often said, they were so much alike. Sometimes she thought that all the people she had ever known were strangers except Rhett.

“Can’t you tell me?” he took her hand, oddly gentle. “It’s more than old Frank leaving you? Do you need money?”

“Money? God, no! Oh, Rhett, I’m so afraid.”

“Don’t be a goose, Scarlett, you’ve never been afraid in your life.”

“Oh, Rhett, I am afraid!”

The words bubbled up faster than she could speak them. She could tell him. She could tell Rhett anything. He’d been so bad himself that he wouldn’t sit in judgment on her. How wonderful to know someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar, when all the world was filled with people who would not lie to save their souls and who would rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!

“I’m afraid I’ll die and go to hell.”

If he laughed at her she would die, right then. But he did not laugh.

“You are pretty healthy—and maybe there isn’t any hell after all.”

“Oh, but there is, Rhett! You know there is!”

“I know there is but it’s right here on earth. Not after we die. There’s nothing after we die, Scarlett. You are having your hell now.”

“Oh, Rhett, that’s blasphemous!”

“But singularly comforting. Tell me, why are you going to hell?”

He was teasing now, she could see the glint in his eyes but she did not mind. His hands felt so warm and strong, so comforting to cling to.

“Rhett, I oughtn’t to have married Frank. It was wrong. He was Suellen’s beau and he loved her, not me. But I lied to him and told him she was going to marry Tony Fontaine. Oh, how could I have done it?”

“Ah, so that was how it came about! I always wondered.”

“And then I made him so miserable. I made him do all sorts of things he didn’t want to do, like making people pay their bills when they really couldn’t afford to pay them. And it hurt him so when I ran the mills and built the saloon and leased convicts. He could hardly hold up his head for shame. And Rhett, I killed him. Yes, I did! I didn’t know he was in the Klan. I never dreamed he had that much gumption. But I ought to have known. And I killed him.”

“ ‘Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?’ ”

“What?”

“No matter. Go on.”

“Go on? That’s all. Isn’t it enough? I married him, I made him unhappy and I killed him. Oh, my God! I don’t see how I could have done it! I lied to him and I married him. It all seemed so right when I did it but now I see how wrong it was. Rhett, it doesn’t seem like it was me who did all these things. I was so mean to him but I’m not really mean. I wasn’t raised that way. Mother—” She stopped and swallowed. She had avoided thinking of Ellen all day but she could no longer blot out her image.

“I often wondered what she was like. You seemed to me so like your father.”

“Mother was— Oh, Rhett, for the first time I’m glad she’s dead, so she can’t see me. She didn’t raise me to be mean. She was so kind to everybody, so good. She’d rather I’d have starved than done this. And I so wanted to be just like her
in
every way and I’m not like her one bit I hadn’t thought of that—there’s been so much else to think about—but I wanted to be like her. I didn’t want to be like Pa. I loved him but he was—so—so thoughtless. Rhett, sometimes I did try so hard to be nice to people and kind to Frank, but then the nightmare would come back and scare me so bad I’d want to rush out and just grab money away from people, whether it was mine or not.”

Tears were streaming unheeded down her face and she clutched his hand so hard that her nails dug into his flesh.

“What nightmare?” His voice was calm and soothing.

“Oh—I forgot you didn’t know. Well, just when I would try to be nice to folks and tell myself that money wasn’t everything, I’d go to bed and dream that I was back at Tara right after Mother died, right after the Yankees went through. Rhett, you can’t imagine— I get cold when I think about it. I can see how everything is burned and so still and there’s nothing to eat. Oh, Rhett, in my dream I’m hungry again.”

“Go on.”

“I’m hungry and everybody, Pa and the girls and the darkies, are starving and they keep saying over and over: ‘We’re hungry’ and I’m so empty it hurts, and so frightened. My mind keeps saying: ‘If I ever get out of this, I’ll never, never be hungry again’ and then the dream goes off into a gray mist and I’m running, running in the mist, running so hard my heart’s about to burst and something is chasing me, and I can’t breathe but I keep thinking that if I can just get there, I’ll be safe. But I don’t know where I’m trying to get to. And then I’d wake up and I’d be cold with fright and so afraid that I’d be hungry again. When I wake up from that dream, it seems like there’s not enough money in the world to keep me from being afraid of being hungry again. And then Frank would be so mealy mouthed and slow poky that he would make me mad and I’d lose my temper. He didn’t understand, I guess, and I couldn’t make him understand. I kept thinking that I’d make it up to him some day when we had money and I wasn’t so afraid of being hungry. And now he’s dead and it’s too late. Oh, it seemed so right when I did it but it was all so wrong. If I had it to do over again, I’d do it so differently.”

“Hush,” he said, disentangling her frantic grip and pulling a clean handkerchief from his pocket. “Wipe your face. There is no sense in your tearing yourself to pieces this way.”

She took the handkerchief and wiped her damp cheeks, a little relief stealing over her as if she had shifted some of her burden to his broad shoulders. He looked so capable and calm and even the slight twist of his mouth was comforting as though it proved her agony and confusion unwarranted.

“Feel better now? Then let’s get to the bottom of this. You say if you had it to do over again, you’d do it differently. But would you? Think, now. Would you?”

“Well—”

“No, you’d do the same things again. Did you have any other choice?”

“No.”

“Then what are you sorry about?”

“I was so mean and now he’s dead.”

“And if he wasn’t dead, you’d still be mean. As I understand it, you are not really sorry for marrying Frank and bullying him and inadvertently causing his death. You are only sorry because you are afraid of going to hell. Is that right?”

“Well—that sounds so mixed up.”

“Your ethics are considerably mixed up too. You are in the exact position of a thief who’s been caught red handed and isn’t sorry he stole but is terribly, terribly sorry he’s going to jail.”

“A thief—”

“Oh, don’t be so literal! In other words if you didn’t have this silly idea that you were damned to hell fire eternal, you’d think you were well rid of Frank.”

“Oh, Rhett!”

“Oh, come! You are confessing and you might as well confess the truth as a decorous lie. Did your—er—conscience bother you much when you offered to—shall we say—part with that jewel which is dearer than life for three hundred dollars?”

The brandy was spinning in her head now and she felt giddy and a little reckless. What was the use in lying to him? He always seemed to read her mind.

“I really didn’t think about God much then—or hell. And when I did think—well, I just reckoned God would understand.”

“But you don’t credit God with understanding why you married Frank?”

“Rhett, how can you talk so about God when you know you don’t believe there is one?”

“But you believe in a God of Wrath and that’s what’s important at present. Why shouldn’t the Lord understand? Are you sorry you still own Tara and there aren’t Carpetbaggers living there? Are you sorry you aren’t hungry and ragged?”

“Oh, no!”

“Well, did you have any alternative except marrying Frank?”

“No.”

“He didn’t have to marry you, did he? Men are free agents. And he didn’t have to let you bully him into doing things he didn’t want to, did he?”

“Well—”

“Scarlett, why worry about it? If you had it to do over again you would be driven to the lie and he to marrying you. You would still have run yourself into danger and he would have had to avenge you. If he had married Sister Sue, she might not have caused his death but she’d probably have made him twice as unhappy as you did. It couldn’t have happened differently.”

“But I could have been nicer to him.”

“You could have been—if you’d been somebody else. But you were born to bully anyone who’ll let you do it. The strong were made to bully and the weak to knuckle under. It’s all Frank’s fault for not beating you with a buggy whip. … I’m surprised at you, Scarlett, for sprouting a conscience this late in life. Opportunists like you shouldn’t have them.”

“What is an oppor—what did you call it?”

“A person who takes advantage of opportunities.”

“Is that wrong?”

“It has always been held in disrepute—especially by those who had the same opportunities and didn’t take them.”

“Oh, Rhett, you are joking and I thought you were going to be nice!”

“I am being nice—for me. Scarlett, darling, you are tipsy. That’s what’s the matter with you.”

“You dare—”

“Yes, I dare. You are on the verge of what is vulgarly called a ‘crying jag’ and so I shall change the subject and cheer you up by telling you some news that will amuse you. In fact, that’s why I came here this evening, to tell you my news before I went away.”