Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind

She said: “Ashley!” in a trembling voice and he turned slowly and looked at her. The drowsy aloofness had gone from his gray eyes and they were wide and unmasked. In them she saw fear that matched her own fear, helplessness weaker than her own, bewilderment more profound than she would ever know. The feeling of dread which had possessed her in the hall deepened as she saw his face. She went toward him.

“I’m frightened,” she said. “Oh, Ashley, hold me. I’m so frightened!”

He made no move to her but stared, gripping the glove tightly in both hands. She put a hand on his arm and whispered: “What is it?”

His eyes searched her intently, hunting, hunting desperately for something he did not find. Finally he spoke and his voice was not his own.

“I was wanting you,” he said. “I was going to run and find you—run like a child wanting comfort—and I find a child, more frightened, running to me.”

“Not you—you can’t be frightened,” she cried. “Nothing has ever frightened you. But I—You’ve always been so strong—”

“If I’ve ever been strong, it was because she was behind me,” he said, his voice breaking, and he looked down at the glove and smoothed the fingers. “And—and—all the strength I ever had is going with her.”

There was such a note of wild despair in his low voice that she dropped her hand from his arm and stepped back. And in the heavy silence that fell between them, she felt that she really understood him for the first time in her life.

“Why—” she said slowly, “why, Ashley, you love her, don’t you?”

He spoke as with an effort.

“She is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”

“Dreams!” she thought, an old irritation stirring. “Always dreams with him! Never common sense!”

With a heart that was heavy and a little bitter, she said: “You’ve been such a fool, Ashley. Why couldn’t you see that she was worth a million of me?”

“Scarlett, please! If you only knew what I’ve gone through since the doctor—”

“What you’ve gone through! Don’t you think that I—Oh, Ashley, you should have known, years ago, that you loved her and not me! Why didn’t you! Everything would have been so different, so—Oh, you should have realized and not kept me dangling with all your talk about honor and sacrifice! If you’d told me, years ago, I’d have—It would have killed me but I could have stood it somehow. But you wait till now, till Melly’s dying, to find it out and now it’s too late to do anything. Oh, Ashley, men are supposed to know such things—not women! You should have seen so clearly that you loved her all the time and only wanted me like—like Rhett wants that Watling woman!”

He winced at her words but his eyes still met hers, imploring silence, comfort. Every line of his face admitted the truth of her words. The very droop of his shoulders showed that his own selfcastigation was more cruel than any she could give. He stood silent before her, clutching the glove as though it were an understanding hand and, in the stillness that followed her words, her indignation fell away and pity, tinged with contempt, took its place. Her conscience smote her. She was kicking a beaten and defenseless man—and she had promised Melanie that she would look after him.

“And just as soon as I promised her, I said mean, hurting things to him and there’s no need for me to say them or for anyone to say them. He knows the truth and it’s killing him,” she thought desolately. “He’s not grown up. He’s a child, like me, and he’s sick with fear at losing her. Melly knew how it would be—Melly knew him far better than I do. That’s why she said look after him and Beau, in the same breath. How can Ashley ever stand this? I can stand it. I can stand anything. I’ve had to stand so much. But he can’t—he can’t stand anything without her.”

“Forgive me, darling,” she said gently, putting out her arms. “I know what you must be suffering. But remember, she doesn’t know anything—she never even suspected—God was that good to us.”

He came to her quickly and his arms went round her blindly. She tiptoed to bring her warm cheek comfortingly against his and with one hand she smoothed the back of his hair.

“Don’t cry, sweet. She’d want you to be brave. She’ll want to see you in a moment and you must be brave. She mustn’t see that you’ve been crying. It would worry her.”

He held her in a grip that made breathing difficult and his choking voice was in her ear.

“What will I do? I can’t—I can’t live without her!”

“I can’t either,” she thought, shuddering away from the picture of the long years to come, without Melanie. But she caught herself in a strong grasp. Ashley was depending on her, Melanie was depending on her. As once before, in the moonlight at Tara, drunk, exhausted, she had thought: “Burdens are for shoulders strong enough to carry them.” Well, her shoulders were strong and Ashley’s were not. She squared her shoulders for the load and with a calmness she was far from feeling, kissed his wet cheek without fever or longing or passion, only with cool gentleness.

“We shall manage—somehow,” she said.

A door opened with sudden violence into the hall and Dr. Meade called with sharp urgency:

“Ashley! Quick!”

“My God! She’s gone!” thought Scarlett. “And Ashley didn’t get to tell her good-by! But maybe—”

“Hurry!” she cried aloud, giving him a push, for he stood staring like one stunned. “Hurry!”

She pulled open the door and motioned him through. Galvanized by her words, he ran into the hall, the glove still clasped closely in his hand. She heard his rapid steps for a moment and then the closing of a door.

She said, “My God!” again and walking slowly to the bed, sat down upon it and dropped her head in her hands. She was suddenly tired, more tired than she had ever been in all her life. With the sound of the closing door, the strain under which she had been laboring, the strain which had given her strength, suddenly snapped. She felt exhausted in body and drained of emotions. Now she felt no sorrow or remorse, no fear or amazement. She was tired and her mind ticked away dully, mechanically, as the clock on the mantel.

Out of the dullness, one thought arose. Ashley did not love her and had never really loved her and the knowledge did not hurt. It should hurt. She should be desolate, broken hearted, ready to scream at fate. She had relied upon his love for so long. It had upheld her through so many dark places. Yet, there the truth was. He did not love her and she did not care. She did not care because she did not love him. She did not love him and so nothing he could do or say could hurt her.

She lay down on the bed and put her head on the pillow tiredly. Useless to try to combat the idea, useless to say to herself: “But I do love him. I’ve loved him for years. Love can’t change to apathy in a minute.”

But it could change and it had changed.

“He never really existed at all, except in my imagination,” she thought wearily. “I loved something I made up, something that’s just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley came riding along, so handsome, so different, I put that suit on him and made him wear it whether it fitted him or not. And I wouldn’t see what he really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes—and not him at all.”

Now she could look back down the long years and see herself in green flowered dimity, standing in the sunshine at Tara, thrilled by the young horseman with his blond hair shining like a silver helmet. She could see so clearly now that he was only a childish fancy, no more important really than her spoiled desire for the aquamarine earbobs she had coaxed out of Gerald. For, once she owned the earbobs, they had lost their value, as everything except money lost its value once it was hers. And so he, too, would have become cheap if, in those first far-away days, she had ever had the satisfaction of refusing to marry him. If she had ever had him at her mercy, seen him grown passionate, importunate, jealous, sulky, pleading, like the other boys, the wild infatuation which had possessed her would have passed, blowing away as lightly as mist before sunshine and light wind when she met a new man.

“What a fool I’ve been,” she thought bitterly. “And now I’ve got to pay for it. What I’ve wished for so often has happened. I’ve wished Melly was dead so I could have him. And now she’s dead and I’ve got him and I don’t want him. His damned honor will make him ask me if I want to divorce Rhett and marry him. Marry him? I wouldn’t have him on a silver platter! But, just the same I’ve got him round my neck for the rest of my life. As long as I live I’ll have to look after him and see that he doesn’t starve and that people don’t hurt his feelings. He’ll be just another child, clinging to my skirts. I’ve lost my lover and I’ve got another child. And if I hadn’t promised Melly, I’d—I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.”

She heard whispering voices outside, and going to the door she saw the frightened negroes standing in the back hall, Dilcey with her arms sagging under the heavy weight of the sleeping Beau, Uncle Peter crying, and Cookie wiping her wide wet face on her apron. All three looked at her, dumbly asking what they were to do now. She looked up the hall toward the sitting room and saw India and Aunt Pitty standing speechless, holding each other’s hands and, for once, India had lost her stiff-necked look. Like the negroes, they looked imploringly at her, expecting her to give instructions. She walked into the sitting room and the two women closed about her.