Chapter - 46 | Gone with the Wind

-six
FEW FAMILIES IN THE NORTH end of town slept that night for the news of the
disaster to the Klan, and Rhett’s stratagem spread swiftly on silent feet as
the shadowy form of India Wilkes slipped through back yards, whispered
urgently through kitchen doors and slipped away into the windy darkness.
And in her path, she left fear and desperate hope.
From without, houses looked black and silent and wrapped in sleep but,
within, voices whispered vehemently into the dawn. Not only those
involved in the night’s raid but every member of the Klan was ready for
ﬂight and in almost every stable along Peachtree Street, horses stood
saddled in the darkness, pistols in holsters and food in saddlebags. All that
prevented a wholesale exodus was India’s whispered message: “Captain
Butler says not to run. The roads will be watched. He has arranged with
that Watling creature—” In dark rooms men whispered: “But why should I
trust that damned Scallawag Butler? It may be a trap!” And women’s voices
implored: “Don’t go! If he saved Ashley and Hugh, he may save everybody.
If India and Melanie trust him—” And they half trusted and stayed because
there was no other course open to them.
Earlier in the night, the soldiers had knocked at a dozen doors and those
who could not or would not tell where they had been that night were
marched off under arrest. René Picard and one of Mrs. Merriwether’s
nephews and the Simmons boys and Andy Bonnell were among those who
spent the night in jail. They had been in the ill-starred foray but had
separated from the others after the shooting. Riding hard for home they
were arrested before they learned of Rhett’s plan. Fortunately they all
replied, to questions, that where they had been that night was their own
business and not that of any damned Yankees. They had been locked up for
further questioning in the morning. Old Man Merriwether and Uncle
Henry Hamilton declared shamelessly that they had spent the evening at

Belle Watling’s sporting house and when Captain Jaffery remarked irritably
that they were too old for such goings on, they wanted to ﬁght him.
Belle Watling herself answered Captain Jaffery’s summons, and before he
could make known his mission she shouted that the house was closed for
the night. A passel of quarrelsome drunks had called in the early part of the
evening and had fought one another, torn the place up, broken her ﬁnest
mirrors and so alarmed the young ladies that all business had been
suspended for the night. But if Captain Jaffery wanted a drink, the bar was
still open—
Captain Jaffery, acutely conscious of the grins of his men and feeling
helplessly that he was ﬁghting a mist, declared angrily that he wanted
neither the young ladies nor a drink and demanded if Belle knew the
names of her destructive customers. Oh, yes, Belle knew them. They were
her regulars. They came every Wednesday night and called themselves the
Wednesday Democrats, though what they meant by that she neither knew
or cared. And if they didn’t pay for the damage to the mirrors in the upper
hall, she was going to have the law on them. She kept a respectable house
and— Oh, their names? Belle unhesitatingly reeled off the names of twelve
under suspicion. Captain Jaffery smiled sourly.
“These damned Rebels are as efﬁciently organized as our Secret
Service,” he said. “You and your girls will have to appear before the provost
marshal tomorrow.”
“Will the provost make them pay for my mirrors?”
“To hell with your mirrors! Make Rhett Butler pay for them. He owns
the place, doesn’t he?”
Before dawn, every ex-Confederate family in town knew everything.
And their negroes, who had been told nothing, knew everything too, by
that black grapevine telegraph system which deﬁes white understanding.
Everyone knew the details of the raid, the killing of Frank Kennedy and
crippled Tommy Wellburn and how Ashley was wounded in carrying
Frank’s body away.
Some of the feeling of bitter hatred the women bore Scarlett for her
share in the tragedy was mitigated by the knowledge that her husband was
dead and she knew it and could not admit it and have the poor comfort of
claiming his body. Until morning light disclosed the bodies and the
authorities notiﬁed her, she must know nothing. Frank and Tommy, pistols

in cold hands, lay stiffening among the dead weeds in a vacant lot. And the
Yankees would say they killed each other in a common drunken brawl over
a girl in Belle’s house. Sympathy ran high for Fanny, Tommy’s wife, who
had just had a baby, but no one could slip through the darkness to see her
and comfort her because a squad of Yankees surrounded the house, waiting
for Tommy to return. And there was another squad about Aunt Pitty’s
house, waiting for Frank.
Before dawn the news had trickled about that the military inquiry would
take place that day. The townspeople, heavy eyed from sleeplessness and
anxious waiting, knew that the safety of some of their most prominent
citizens rested on three things—the ability of Ashley Wilkes to stand on
his feet and appear before the military board, as though he suffered nothing
more serious than a morning-after headache, the word of Belle Watling
that these men had been in her house all evening and the word of Rhett
Butler that he had been with them.
The town writhed at these last two! Belle Watling! To owe their men’s
lives to her! It was intolerable! Women who had ostentatiously crossed the
street when they saw Belle coming, wondered if she remembered and
trembled for fear she did. The men felt less humiliation at taking their lives
from Belle than the women did, for many of them thought her a good sort.
But they were stung that they must owe lives and freedom to Rhett Butler,
a speculator and a Scallawag. Belle and Rhett, the town’s best-known fancy
woman and the town’s most hated man. And they must be under obligation
to them.
Another thought that stung them to impotent wrath was the knowledge
that the Yankees and Carpetbaggers would laugh. Oh, how they would
laugh! Twelve of the town’s most prominent citizens revealed as habitual
frequenters of Belle Watling’s sporting house! Two of them killed in a ﬁght
over a cheap little girl, others ejected from the place as too drunk to be
tolerated even by Belle and some under arrest, refusing to admit they were
there when everyone knew they were there!
Atlanta was right in fearing that the Yankees would laugh. They had
squirmed too long beneath Southern coldness and contempt and now they
exploded with hilarity. Ofﬁcers woke comrades and retailed the news.
Husbands roused wives at dawn and told them as much as could be
decently told to women. And the women, dressing hastily, knocked on

their neighbors’ doors and spread the story. The Yankee ladies were
charmed with it all and laughed until tears ran down their faces. This was
Southern chivalry and gallantry for you! Maybe those women who carried
their heads so high and snubbed all attempts at friendliness wouldn’t be so
uppity, now that everyone knew where their husbands spent their time
when they were supposed to be at political meetings. Political meetings!
Well, that was funny!
But even as they laughed, they expressed regret for Scarlett and her
tragedy. After all, Scarlett was a lady and one of the few ladies in Atlanta
who were nice to Yankees. She had already won their sympathy by the fact
that she had to work because her husband couldn’t or wouldn’t support her
properly. Even though her husband was a sorry one, it was dreadful that the
poor thing should discover he had been untrue to her. And it was doubly
dreadful that his death should occur simultaneously with the discovery of
his inﬁdelity. After all, a poor husband was better than no husband at all,
and the Yankee ladies decided they’d be extra nice to Scarlett. But the
others, Mrs. Meade, Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Elsing, Tommy Wellburn’s
widow and most of all, Mrs. Ashley Wilkes, they’d laugh in their faces
every time they saw them. That would teach them a little courtesy.
Much of the whispering that went on in the dark rooms on the north
side of town that night was on this same subject. Atlanta ladies vehemently
told their husbands that they did not care a rap what the Yankees thought.
But inwardly they felt that running an Indian gauntlet would be inﬁnitely
preferable to suffering the ordeal of Yankee grins and not being able to tell
the truth about their husbands.
Dr. Meade, beside himself with outraged dignity at the position into
which Rhett had jockeyed him and the others, told Mrs. Meade that, but
for the fact that it would implicate the others, he would rather confess and
be hanged than to say he had been at Belle’s house.
“It is an insult to you, Mrs. Meade,” he fumed.
“But everyone will know you weren’t there for—for—”
“The Yankees won’t know. They’ll have to believe it if we save our
necks. And they’ll laugh. The very thought that anyone will believe it and
laugh infuriates me. And it insults you because—my dear, I have always
been faithful to you.”

“I know that,” and in the darkness Mrs. Meade smiled and slipped a thin
hand into the doctor’s. “But I’d rather it were really true than have one hair
of your head in danger.”
“Mrs. Meade, do you know what you are saying?” cried the doctor,
aghast at the unsuspected realism of his wife.
“Yes, I know. I’ve lost Darcy and I’ve lost Phil and you are all I have and,
rather than lose you, I’d have you take up your permanent abode at that
place.”
“You are distrait! You cannot know what you are saying.”
“You old fool,” said Mrs. Meade tenderly and laid her head against his
sleeve.
Dr. Meade fumed into silence and stroked her cheek and then exploded
again. “And to be under obligation to that Butler man! Hanging would be
easy compared with that. No, not even if I owe him my life, can I be polite
to him. His insolence is monumental and his shamelessness about his
proﬁteering makes me boil. To owe my life to a man who never went in the
army—”
“Melly said he enlisted after Atlanta fell.”
“It’s a lie. Miss Melly will believe any plausible scoundrel. And what I
can’t understand is why he is doing all this—going to all this trouble. I hate
to say it but—well, there’s always been talk about him and Mrs. Kennedy.
I’ve seen them coming in from rides too often this last year. He must have
done it because of her.”
“If it was because of Scarlett, he wouldn’t have lifted his hand. He’d
have been glad to see Frank Kennedy hanged. I think it’s because of Melly
—”
“Mrs. Meade, you can’t be insinuating that there’s ever been anything
between those two!”
“Oh, don’t be silly! But she’s always been unaccountably fond of him
ever since he tried to get Ashley exchanged during the war. And I must say
this for him, he never smiles in that nasty-nice way when he’s with her.
He’s just as pleasant and thoughtful as can be—really a different man. You
can tell by the way he acts with Melly that he could be decent if he wanted
to. Now, my idea of why he’s doing all this is—” She paused. “Doctor, you
won’t like my idea.”
“I don’t like anything about this whole affair!”

“Well, I think he did it partly for Melly’s sake but mostly because he
thought it would be a huge joke on us all. We’ve hated him so much and
showed it so plainly and now he’s got us in a ﬁx where all of you have your
choice of saying you were at that Watling woman’s house and shaming
yourself and wives before the Yankees—or telling the truth and getting
hanged. And he knows we’ll all be under obligation to him and his—
mistress and that we’d almost rather be hanged than be obliged to them.
Oh, I’ll wager he’s enjoying it.”
The doctor groaned. “He did look amused when he took us upstairs in
that place.”
“Doctor,” Mrs. Meade hesitated, “what did it look like?”
“What are you saying, Mrs. Meade?”
“Her house. What did it look like? Are there cut-glass chandeliers? And
red plush curtains and dozens of full-length gilt mirrors? And were the girls
—were they unclothed?”
“Good God!” cried the doctor, thunderstruck, for it had never occurred
to him that the curiosity of a chaste woman concerning her unchaste sisters
was so devouring. “How can you ask such immodest questions? You are not
yourself. I will mix you a sedative.”
“I don’t want a sedative. I want to know. Oh, dear, this is my only
chance to know what a bad house looks like and now you are mean enough
not to tell me!”
“I noticed nothing. I assure you I was too embarrassed at ﬁnding myself
in such a place to take note of my surroundings,” said the doctor formally,
more upset at this unsuspected revelation of his wife’s character than he
had been by all the previous events of the evening. “If you will excuse me
now, I will try to get some sleep.”
“Well, go to sleep then,” she answered, disappointment in her tones.
Then as the doctor leaned over to remove his boots, her voice spoke from
the darkness with renewed cheerfulness. “I imagine Dolly has gotten it all
out of old man Merriwether and she can tell me about it.”
“Good Heavens, Mrs. Meade! Do you mean to tell me that nice women
talk about such things among them—”
“Oh, go to bed,” said Mrs. Meade.

* * *
It sleeted the next day, but as the wintry twilight drew on the icy particles
stopped falling and a cold wind blew. Wrapped in her cloak, Melanie went
bewilderedly down her front walk behind a strange negro coachman who
had summoned her mysteriously to a closed carriage waiting in front of the
house. As she came up to the carriage the door was opened and she saw a
woman in the dim interior.
Leaning closer, peering inside, Melanie questioned: “Who is it? Won’t
you come in the house. It’s so cold—”
“Please come in here and set with me a minute, Miz Wilkes,” came a
faintly familiar voice, an embarrassed voice from the depths of the carriage.
“Oh, you’re Miss—Mrs.—Watling!” cried Melanie. “I did so want to see
you! You must come in the house.”
“I can’t do that, Miz Wilkes.” Belle Watling’s voice sounded scandalized.
“You come in here and set a minute with me.”
Melanie entered the carriage and the coachman closed the door behind
her. She sat down beside Belle and reached for her hand.
“How can I ever thank you enough for what you did today! How can
any of us thank you enough!”
“Miz Wilkes, you hadn’t ought of sent me that note this mornin’. Not
that I wasn’t proud to have a note from you but the Yankees might of got it.
And as for sayin’ you was goin’ to call on me to thank me—why, Miz
Wilkes, you must of lost your mind! The very idea! I come up here as soon
as ’twas dark to tell you you mustn’t think of any sech thing. Why, I—why,
you—it wouldn’t be ﬁttin’ at all.”
“It wouldn’t be ﬁtting for me to call and thank a kind woman who saved
my husband’s life?”
“Oh, shucks, Miz Wilkes! You know what I mean!”
Melanie was silent for a moment, embarrassed by the implication.
Somehow this handsome, sedately dressed woman sitting in the darkness of
the carriage didn’t look and talk as she imagined a bad woman, the Madam
of a House, should look and talk. She sounded like—well, a little common
and countriﬁed but nice and warm hearted.
“You were wonderful before the provost marshal today, Mrs. Watling!
You and the other—your—the young ladies certainly saved our men’s

lives.”
“Mr. Wilkes was the wonderful one. I don’t know how he even stood up
and told his story, much less look as cool as he done. He was sure bleedin’
like a pig when I seen him last night. Is he goin’ to be all right, Miz
Wilkes?”
“Yes, thank you. The doctor says it’s just a ﬂesh wound, though he did
lose a tremendous lot of blood. This morning he was—well, he was pretty
well laced with brandy or he’d never have had the strength to go through
with it all so well. But it was you, Mrs. Watling, who saved them. When
you got mad and talked about the broken mirrors you sounded so—so
convincing.”
“Thank you, Ma’m. But I—I thought Captain Butler done mighty ﬁne
too,” said Belle, shy pride in her voice.
“Oh, he was wonderful!” cried Melanie warmly. “The Yankees couldn’t
help but believe his testimony. He was so smart about the whole affair. I
can never thank him enough—or you either! How good and kind you are!”
“Thank you kindly, Miz Wilkes. It was a pleasure to do it. I—I hope it
ain’t goin’ to embarrass you none, me sayin’ Mr. Wilkes come regular to my
place. He never, you know—”
“Yes, I know. No, it doesn’t embarrass me at all. I’m just so grateful to
you.”
“I’ll bet the other ladies ain’t grateful to me,” said Belle with sudden
venom. “And I’ll bet they ain’t grateful to Captain Butler neither. I’ll bet
they’ll hate him just this much more. I’ll bet you’ll be the only lady who
even says thanks to me. I’ll bet they won’t even look me in the eye when
they see me on the street. But I don’t care. I wouldn’t of minded if all their
husbands got hung. But I did mind about Mr. Wilkes. You see I ain’t forgot
how nice you was to me durin’ the war, about the money for the hospital.
There ain’t never been a lady in this town nice to me like you was and I
don’t forget a kindness. And I thought about you bein’ left a widder with a
little boy if Mr. Wilkes got hung and—he’s a nice little boy, your boy is,
Miz Wilkes. I got a boy myself and so I—”
“Oh, you have? Does he live—er—”
“Oh, no’m! He ain’t here in Atlanta. He ain’t never been here. He’s off
at school. I ain’t seen him since he was little. I—well, anyway, when
Captain Butler wanted me to lie for those men I wanted to know who the

men was and when I heard Mr. Wilkes was one I never hesitated. I said to
my girls, I said, ‘I’ll whale the livin’ daylights out of you all if you don’t
make a special point of sayin’ you was with Mr. Wilkes all evenin’.’”
“Oh!” said Melanie, still more embarrassed by Belle’s offhand reference
to her “girls.” “Oh, that was—er—kind of you and—of them, too.”
“No more’n you deserve,” said Belle warmly. “But I wouldn’t of did it for
just anybody. If it had been that Miz Kennedy’s husband by hisself, I
wouldn’t of lifted a ﬁnger, no matter what Captain Butler said.”
“Why?”
“Well, Miz Wilkes, people in my business knows a heap of things. It’d
surprise and shock a heap of ﬁne ladies if they had any notion how much
we knows about them. And she ain’t no good, Miz Wilkes. She kilt her
husband and that nice Wellburn boy, same as if she shot them. She caused
it all, prancin’ about Atlanta by herself, enticin’ niggers and trash. Why,
not one of my girls—”
“You must not say unkind things about my sister-in-law.” Melanie
stiffened coldly.
Belle put an eager placating hand on Melanie’s arm and then hastily
withdrew it.
“Don’t freeze me, please, Miz Wilkes. I couldn’t stand it after you been
so kind and sweet to me. I forgot how you liked her and I’m sorry for what I
said. I’m sorry about poor Mr. Kennedy bein’ dead too. He was a nice man.
I used to buy some of the stuff for my house from him and he always treated
me pleasant. But Miz Kennedy—well, she just ain’t in the same class with
you, Miz Wilkes. She’s a mighty cold woman and I can’t help it if I think
so…. When are they goin’ to bury Mr. Kennedy?”
“Tomorrow morning. And you are wrong about Mrs. Kennedy. Why, this
very minute she’s prostrated with grief.”
“Maybe so,” said Belle with evident disbelief. “Well, I got to be goin’.
I’m afraid somebody might recognize this carriage if I stayed here longer
and that wouldn’t do you no good. And, Miz Wilkes, if you ever see me on
the street, you—you don’t have to speak to me. I’ll understand.”
“I shall be proud to speak to you. Proud to be under obligation to you. I
hope—I hope we meet again.”
“No,” said Belle. “That wouldn’t be ﬁttin’. Good night.”