Gone With the Wind (41 page)

“How is she?” questioned Scarlett softly.

“Not a tear,” said Melanie. “It’s terrible when women can’t cry. I don’t know how men stand things without crying. I guess it’s because they’re stronger and braver than women. She says she’s going to Pennsylvania by herself to bring him home. The doctor can’t leave the hospital.”

“It will be dreadful for her! Why can’t Phil go?”

“She’s afraid he’ll join the army if he gets out of her sight. You know he’s so big for his age and they’re taking them at sixteen now.”

One by one the neighbors slipped away, reluctant to be present when the doctor came home, and Scarlett and Melanie were left alone, sewing in the parlor. Melanie looked sad but tranquil, though tears dropped down on the cloth she held in her hands. Evidently she had not thought that the battle might still be going on and Ashley perhaps dead at this very moment. With panic in her heart, Scarlett did not know whether to tell Melanie of Rhett’s words and have the dubious comfort of her misery or keep it to herself. Finally she decided to remain quiet. It would never do for Melanie to think her too worried about Ashley. She thanked God that everyone, Melly and Pitty included, had been too engrossed in her own worries that morning to notice her conduct.

After an interval of silent sewing, they heard sounds outside and, peering through the curtains, they saw Dr. Meade alighting from his horse. His shoulders were sagging and his head bowed until his gray beard spread out fanlike on his chest. He came slowly into the house and, laying down his hat and bag, kissed both the girls silently. Then he went tiredly up the stairs. In a moment Phil came down, all long legs and arms and awkwardness. The two girls looked an invitation to join them, but he went onto the front porch and, seating himself on the top step, dropped his head on his cupped palm.

Melly sighed.

“He’s mad because they won’t let him go fight the Yankees. Fifteen years old! Oh, Scarlett, it would be Heaven to have a son like that!”

“And have him get killed,” said Scarlett shortly, thinking of Darcy.

“It would be better to have a son even if he did get killed than to never have one,” said Melanie and gulped. “You can’t understand, Scarlett, because you’ve got little Wade, but I— Oh, Scarlett, I want a baby so bad! I know you think I’m horrid to say it right out, but it’s true and only what every woman wants and you know it.”

Scarlett restrained herself from sniffing.

“If God should will that Ashley should be—taken, I suppose I could bear it, though I’d rather die if he died. But God would give me strength to bear it. But I could not bear having him dead and not having—not having a child of his to comfort me. Oh, Scarlett, how lucky you are! Though you lost Charlie, you have his son. And if Ashley goes, I’ll have nothing. Scarlett, forgive me, but sometimes I’ve been so jealous of you—”

“Jealous—of me?” cried Scarlett, stricken with guilt.

“Because you have a son and I haven’t. I’ve even pretended sometimes that Wade was mine because it’s so awful not to have a child.”

“Fiddle-dee-dee!” said Scarlett in relief. She cast a quick glance at the slight figure with blushing face bent over the sewing. Melanie might want children but she certainly did not have the figure for bearing them. She was hardly taller than a twelve-year-old child, her hips were as narrow as a child’s and her breasts were very flat. The very thought of Melanie having a child was repellent to Scarlett. It brought up too many thoughts she couldn’t bear thinking. If Melanie should have a child of Ashley’s, it would be as though something were taken from Scarlett that was her own.

“Do forgive me for saying that about Wade. You know I love him so. You aren’t mad at me, are you?”

“Don’t be silly,” said Scarlett shortly. “And go out on the porch and do something for Phil. He’s crying.”

CHAPTER XV

THE ARMY, driven back into Virginia, went into winter quarters on the Rapidan—a tired, depleted army since the defeat at Gettysburg—and as the Christmas season approached, Ashley came home on furlough. Scarlett, seeing him for the first time in more than two years, was frightened by the violence of her feelings. When she had stood in the parlor at Twelve Oaks and seen him married to Melanie, she had thought she could never love him with a more heartbreaking intensity than she did at that moment. But now she knew her feelings of that long-past night were those of a spoiled child thwarted of a toy. Now, her emotions were sharpened by her long dreams of him, heightened by the repression she had been forced to put on her tongue.

This Ashley Wilkes in his faded, patched uniform, his blond hair bleached tow by summer suns, was a different man from the easy-going, drowsy-eyed boy she had loved to desperation before the war. And he was a thousand times more thrilling. He was bronzed and lean now, where he had once been fair and slender, and the long golden mustache drooping about his mouth, cavalry style, was the last touch needed to make him the perfect picture of a soldier.

He stood with military straightness in his old uniform, his pistol in its worn holster, his battered scabbard smartly slapping his high boots, his tarnished spurs dully gleaming—Major Ashley Wilkes, C.S.A. The habit of command sat upon him now, a quiet air of self-reliance and authority, and grim lines were beginning to emerge about his mouth. There was something new and strange about the square set of his shoulders and the cool bright gleam of his eyes. Where he had once been lounging and indolent, he was now as alert as a prowling cat, with the tense alertness of one whose nerves are perpetually drawn as tight as the strings of a violin. In his eyes, there was a fagged, haunted look, and the sunburned skin was tight across the fine bones of his face—her same handsome Ashley, yet so very different.

Scarlett had made her plans to spend Christmas at Tara, but after Ashley’s telegram came no power on earth, not even a direct command from the disappointed Ellen, could drag her away from Atlanta. Had Ashley intended going to Twelve Oaks, she would have hastened to Tara to be near him; but he had written his family to join him in Atlanta, and Mr. Wilkes and Honey and India were already in town. Go home to Tara and miss seeing him, after two long years? Miss the heart-quickening sound of his voice, miss reading in his eyes that he had not forgotten her? Never! Not for all the mothers in the world.

Ashley came home four days before Christmas, with a group of the County boys also on furlough, a sadly diminished group since Gettysburg. Cade Calvert was among them, a thin, gaunt Cade, who coughed continually, two of the Munroe boys, bubbling with the excitement of their first leave since 1861, and Alex and Tony Fontaine, splendidly drunk, boisterous and quarrelsome. The group had two hours to wait between trains and, as it was taxing the diplomacy of the sober members of the party to keep the Fontaines from fighting each other and perfect strangers in the depot, Ashley brought them all home to Aunt Pittypat’s.

“You’d think they’d had enough fighting in Virginia,” said Cade bitterly, as he watched the two bristle like game-cocks over who should be the first to kiss the fluttering and flattered Aunt Pitty. “But no. They’ve been drunk and picking fights ever since we got to Richmond. The provost guard took them up there and if it hadn’t been for Ashley’s slick tongue, they’d have spent Christmas in jail.”

But Scarlett hardly heard a word he said, so enraptured was she at being in the same room with Ashley again. How could she have thought during these two years that other men were nice or handsome or exciting? How could she have even endured hearing them make love to her when Ashley was in the world? He was home again, separated from her only by the width of the parlor rug, and it took all her strength not to dissolve in happy tears every time she looked at him sitting there on the sofa with Melly on one side and India on the other and Honey hanging over his shoulder. If only she had the right to sit there beside him, her arm through his! If only she could pat his sleeve every few minutes to make sure he was really there, hold his hand and use his handkerchief to wipe away her tears of joy. For Melanie was doing all these things, unashamedly. Too happy to be shy and reserved, she hung on her husband’s arm and adored him openly with her eyes, with her smiles, her tears. And Scarlett was too happy to resent this, too glad to be jealous. Ashley was home at last!

Now and then she put her hand up to her cheek where he had kissed her and felt again the thrill of his lips and smiled at him. He had not kissed her first, of course. Melly had hurled herself into his arms crying incoherently, holding him as though she would never let him go. And then, India and Honey had hugged him, fairly tearing him from Melanie’s arms. Then he had kissed his father, with a dignified affectionate embrace that showed the strong quiet feeling that lay between them. And then Aunt Pitty, who was jumping up and down on her inadequate little feet with excitement. Finally he turned to her, surrounded by all the boys who were claiming their kisses, and said: “Oh, Scarlett! You pretty, pretty thing!” and kissed her on the cheek.

With that kiss, everything she had intended to say in welcome took wings. Not until hours later did she recall that he had not kissed her on the lips. Then she wondered feverishly if he would have done it had she met him alone, bending his tall body over hers, pulling her up on tiptoe, holding her for a long, long time. And because it made her happy to think so, she believed that he would. But there would be time for all things, a whole week! Surely she could maneuver to get him alone and say: “Do you remember those rides we used to take down our secret bridle paths?” “Do you remember how the moon looked that night when we sat on the steps at Tara and you quoted that poem?” (Good Heavens! What was the name of that poem, anyway?) “Do you remember that afternoon when I sprained my ankle and you carried me home in your arms in the twilight?”

Oh, there were so many things she would preface with “Do you remember?” So many dear memories that would bring back to him those lovely days when they roamed the County like care-free children, so many things that would call to mind the days before Melanie Hamilton entered on the scene. And while they talked she could perhaps read in his eyes some quickening of emotion, some hint that behind the barrier of husbandly affection for Melanie he still cared, cared as passionately as on that day of the barbecue when he burst forth with the truth. It did not occur to her to plan just what they would do if Ashley should declare his love for her in unmistakable words. It would be enough to know that he did care. … Yes, she could wait, could let Melanie have her happy hour of squeezing his arm and crying. Her time would come. After all, what did a girl like Melanie know of love?

“Darling, you look like a ragamuffin,” said Melanie when the first excitement of homecoming was over. “Who did mend your uniform and why did they use blue patches?”

“I thought I looked perfectly dashing,” said Ashley, considering his appearance. “Just compare me with those rag-tags over there and you’ll appreciate me more. Mose mended the uniform and I thought he did very well, considering that he’d never had a needle in his hand before the war. About the blue cloth, when it comes to a choice between having holes in your britches or patching them with pieces of a captured Yankee uniform—well, there just isn’t any choice. And as for looking like a ragamuffin, you should thank your stars your husband didn’t come home barefooted. Last week my old boots wore completely out, and I would have come home with sacks tied on my feet if we hadn’t had the good luck to shoot two Yankee scouts. The boots of one of them fitted me perfectly.”

He stretched out his long legs in their scarred high boots for them to admire.

“And the boots of the other scout didn’t fit me,” said Cade. “They’re two sizes too small and they’re killing me this minute. But I’m going home in style just the same.”

“And the selfish swine won’t give them to either of us,” said Tony. “And they’d fit our small, aristocratic Fontaine feet perfectly. Hell’s afire, I’m ashamed to face Mother in these brogans. Before the war she wouldn’t have let one of our darkies wear them.”

“Don’t worry,” said Alex, eyeing Cade’s boots. “We’ll take them off of him on the train going home. I don’t mind facing Mother but I’m da—I mean I don’t intend for Dimity Munroe to see my toes sticking out.”

“Why, they’re my boots. I claimed them first,” said Tony, beginning to scowl at his brother; and Melanie, fluttering with fear at the possibility of one of the famous Fontaine quarrels, interposed and made peace.

“I had a full beard to show you girls,” said Ashley, ruefully rubbing his face where half-healed razor nicks still showed. “It was a beautiful beard and if I do say it myself, neither Jeb Stuart nor Nathan Bedford Forrest had a handsomer one. But when we got to Richmond, those two scoundrels,” indicating the Fontaines, “decided that as they were shaving their beards, mine should come off too. They got me down and shaved me, and it’s a wonder my head didn’t come off along with the beard. It was only by the intervention of Evan and Cade that my mustache was saved.”

“Snakes, Mrs. Wilkes! You ought to thank me. You’d never have recognized him and wouldn’t have let him in the door,” said Alex. “We did it to show our appreciation of his talking the provost guard out of putting us in jail. If you say the word, we’ll take the mustache off for you, right now.”

“Oh, no, thank you!” said Melanie hastily, clutching Ashley in a frightened way, for the two swarthy little men looked capable of any violence. “I think it’s perfectly lovely.”

That’s love,” said the Fontaines, nodding gravely at each other.

When Ashley went into the cold to see the boys off to the depot in Aunt Pitty’s carriage, Melanie caught Scarlett’s arm.

“Isn’t his uniform dreadful? Won’t my coat be a surprise? Oh, if only I had enough cloth for britches too!”

That coat for Ashley was a sore subject with Scarlett, for she wished so ardently that she and not Melanie were bestowing it as a Christmas gift. Gray wool for uniforms was now almost literally more priceless than rubies, and Ashley was wearing the familiar homespun. Even butternut was now none too plentiful, and many of the soldiers were dressed in captured Yankee uniforms which had been turned a dark-brown color with walnut-shell dye. But Melanie, by rare luck, had come into possession of enough gray broadcloth to make a coat—a rather short coat but a coat just the same. She had nursed a Charleston boy in the hospital and when he died had clipped a lock of his hair and sent it to his mother, along with the scant contents of his pockets and a comforting account of his last hours which made no mention of the torment in which he died. A correspondence had sprung up between them and, learning that Melanie had a husband at the front, the mother had sent her the length of gray cloth and brass buttons which she had bought for her dead son. It was a beautiful piece of material, thick and warm and with a dull sheen to it undoubtedly blockade goods and undoubtedly very expensive. It was now in the hands of the tailor and Melanie was hurrying him to have it ready by Christmas morning. Scarlett would have given anything to be able to provide the rest of the uniform, but the necessary materials were simply not to be had in Atlanta.