Alexandra Ripley - Scarlett

It did happen, her heart cried, it did. I didn’t make it up.

And her mind, so carefully taught by her mother that ladies did not have animal impulses, could not control the passionate demands of her body to feel rapture and surrender again.

Scarlett’s hands held her aching breasts, but hers were not the hands her body longed for. She dropped her arms onto the table in front of her, her head onto her arms. And she abandoned herself to the waves of desire and pain that made her writhe, made her call out brokenly into the empty, silent, candlelit room.

“Rhett, oh Rhett, I need you.”

Winter was approaching, and Scarlett grew more frantic with every passing day. Joe Colleton had dug the hole for the cellar of the first house, but repeated rains made it impossible to pour the concrete foundations. “Mr. Wilkes would smell a rat if I bought lumber before I’m ready to frame,” he said reasonably, and Scarlett knew he was right. But it made the delay no less frustrating.

Maybe the whole building idea was a mistake. Day after day the newspaper reported more disasters in the business world. There were soup kitchens and bread lines now in America’s big cities because thousands more people lost their jobs every week when companies went bankrupt. Why was she risking her money now, at the worst possible time? Why had she made that fool promise to Melly? If only the cold rain would stop . . .

And the days would stop getting shorter. She could keep busy in the daytime, but darkness closed her in the empty house with only her thoughts for companions. And she didn’t want to think, because she could find no answers to anything. How had she gotten into this mess? She’d never deliberately done anything to turn people against her, why were they all being so hateful? Why was it taking Rhett so long to come home? What could she do to make things better? There had to be something, she couldn’t go on forever walking from room to room in the big house like a pea rattling around in an empty washtub.

She’d be glad to have Wade and Ella come home to keep her company, but Suellen had written that they were all under quarantine while one child after another went through the long itchy torture of chicken pox.

She could take up with the Barts and all their friends again. It didn’t matter that she’d called Mamie a sow, her skin was as thick as a brick wall. One reason Scarlett had enjoyed having “the dregs” for friends was that she could use the rough side of her tongue on them any time she liked and they’d always come crawling back for more. I haven’t sunk to that level, thank God. I’m not going to go crawling back to them now that I know what low things they are.

It’s just that it gets dark so early and the nights are so long and I can’t sleep like I ought. Things will get better when the rain stops . . . when winter’s over . . . when Rhett comes home . . .

At last the weather turned to bright, cold, sunny days with high wisps of cloud in brilliant blue skies. Colleton pumped the standing water out of the hole he’d dug, and the sharp wind dried the red Georgia clay to the hardness of brick. He ordered concrete then, and lumber to make the forms for casting the footings.

Scarlett plunged into a celebration of shopping for gifts. It was nearly Christmas. She bought dolls for Ella and each of Suellen’s girls. Baby dolls for the younger ones with soft sawdust-stuffed bodies and chubby porcelain faces and hands and feet. Susie and Ella had nearly identical lady dolls with cunning leather trunks full of beautiful clothes. Wade was a problem; Scarlett never knew what to do about him. Then she remembered Tony Fontaine’s promise to teach him how to twirl his six-shooters, and she bought Wade his own pair, with his initials carved in their ivory-inlaid handles. Suellen was easy—a beaded silk reticule that was too fancy to use in the country, with a twenty dollar gold piece inside it good anywhere. Will was impossible. Scarlett searched high and low before she gave up and bought him another sheepskin jacket like the one she’d given him the year before, and the year before that. It’s the thought that counts, she told herself firmly.

She debated for a long time before she decided not to get a present for Beau. She wouldn’t put it past India to send it back unopened. Besides, Beau wasn’t lacking for anything, she thought bitterly. The Wilkes account at her store was mounting up every week.

She bought a gold cigar-cutter for Rhett, but she lacked the nerve to send it. Instead, she made her gifts to her two aunts in much nicer than usual. They might tell Rhett’s mother how thoughtful she was, and Mrs. Butler might tell Rhett.

I wonder if he’ll send me anything? Or bring me something? Maybe he’ll come home for Christmas to keep gossip down.

The possibility was real enough to send Scarlett into a happy frenzy of decorating the house. When it was a bower of pine branches, holly, and ivy, she took the leftovers down to the store.

“We’ve always had the tinsel garland in the window, Mrs. Butler. No need for more than that,” said Willie Kershaw.

“Don’t tell me what’s needed and what’s not. I say wrap this pine roping around all the counters and put the holly wreath on the door. It’ll make people feel Christmassy, and they’ll spend more money on presents. We don’t have enough little pretties for gifts. Where’s that big box of oiled paper fans?”

“You told me to get it out of the way. Said we shouldn’t use good shelf space for fripperies, when what people wanted was nails and washboards.”

“You fool, that was then and this is now. Get it out.”

“Well, I ain’t exactly sure where I put it. That was a long time ago.”

“Mother of God! Go see what that man over there wants. I’ll find it myself.” Scarlett stormed into the stockroom behind the selling area.

She was up on a ladder looking through the dusty piles on a top shelf when she heard the familiar voices of Mrs. Merriwether and her daughter Maybelle.

“I thought you said you’d never set foot across the threshold of Scarlett’s store, Mother.”

“Hush, the clerk might hear you. We’ve looked every place in town, and there’s not a length of black velvet to be found. I can’t finish my costume without it. Who ever heard of Queen Victoria wearing a colored cape?”

Scarlett frowned. What on earth were they talking about? She quietly descended the ladder and walked on tiptoe to press her ear against the wall.

“No, ma’am,” she heard the clerk say. “We don’t get much call for velvet.”

“Just what I should have expected. Come on, Maybelle.”

“As long as we’re here, maybe I can find the feathers I need for my Pocahontas,” Maybelle was saying.

“Nonsense. Come on. We should never have come here. Suppose someone saw us.” Mrs. Merriwether’s tread was heavy but rapid. She slammed the door behind her.

Scarlett climbed up the ladder again. All her Christmas spirit was gone. Someone was having a costume party, and she wasn’t invited. She wished she’d let Ashley break his neck in Melanie’s grave! She found the box she was looking for and threw it down to the floor, where it burst, scattering the brightly colored fans in a wide arc.

“Now you pick them up and dust off every single one of them,” she ordered. “I’m going home.” She’d rather die than start boohooing in front of her own clerks.

The day’s newspaper was on the seat of her carriage. She’d been too busy with the decorations to read it as yet. And she didn’t much care about reading it now, but it would hide her face from any nosybody looking in at her. Scarlett straightened out the bend in it and opened it to the center page for “Our Charleston Letter.” It was all about the Washington Race Course, newly reopened, and the upcoming Race Day in January. Scarlett skimmed over the rapturous descriptions of Race Weeks before the War, the customary Charleston claims to have had the finest, most elaborate everything, and the predictions that the races to come would equal their predecessors if not surpass them. According to the correspondent, there would be parties all day every day and a ball every night for weeks.

“And Rhett Butler at every one of them, I’ll bet,” Scarlett muttered. She threw the newspaper on the floor.

A front-page headline caught her eye. CARNIVAL TO CONCLUDE WITH MASQUERADE BALL. That must be what the old dragon and Maybelle were talking about, she thought. Everyone in the world except me is going to wonderful parties. She snatched the paper up again to read the article:

“Damn!” said Scarlett.

Then desolation took hold of her, and she began to cry like a child. It wasn’t fair for Rhett to be dancing and laughing in Charleston and all her enemies in Atlanta to be having a good time while she was stuck by herself in her huge silent house. She’d never done anything bad enough to deserve such punishment.