-three
THE FRONT DOOR WAS SLIGHTLY AJAR and she trotted, breathless, into the
hall and paused for a moment under the rainbow prisms of the chandelier.
For all its brightness the house was very still, not with the serene stillness of
sleep but with a watchful, tired silence that was faintly ominous. She saw at
a glance that Rhett was not in the parlor or the library and her heart sank.
Suppose he should be out—out with Belle or wherever it was he spent the
many evenings when he did not appear at the supper table? She had not
bargained on this.
She had started up the steps in search of him when she saw that the
door of the dining room was closed. Her heart contracted a little with
shame at the sight of that closed door, remembering the many nights of this
last summer when Rhett had sat there alone, drinking until he was sodden
and Pork came to urge him to bed. That had been her fault but she’d
change it all. Everything was going to be different from now on—but,
please God, don’t let him be too drunk tonight. If he’s too drunk he won’t
believe me and he’ll laugh at me and that will break my heart.
She quietly opened the dining-room door a crack and peered in. He was
seated before the table, slumped in his chair, and a full decanter stood
before him with the stopper in place, the glass unused. Thank God, he was
sober! She pulled open the door, holding herself back from running to him.
But when he looked up at her, something in his gaze stopped her dead on
the threshold, stilled the words on her lips.
He looked at her steadily with dark eyes that were heavy with fatigue
and there was no leaping light in them. Though her hair was tumbling
about her shoulders, her bosom heaving breathlessly and her skirts mud
splattered to the knees, his face did not change with surprise or question or
his lips twist with mockery. He was sunken in his chair, his suit wrinkling
untidily against his thickening waist, every line of him proclaiming the
ruin of a fine body and the coarsening of a strong face. Drink and
dissipation had done their work on the coin-clean profile and now it was
no longer the head of a young pagan prince on new-minted gold but a
decadent, tired Caesar on copper debased by long usage. He looked up at
her as she stood there, hand on heart, looked quietly, almost in a kindly
way, and that frightened her.
“Come and sit down,” he said. “She is dead?”
She nodded and advanced hesitantly toward him, uncertainty taking
form in her mind at this new expression on his face. Without rising, he
pushed back a chair with his foot and she sank into it. She wished he had
not spoken of Melanie so soon. She did not want to talk of her now, to re-
live the agony of the last hour. There was all the rest of her life in which to
speak of Melanie. But it seemed to her now, driven by a fierce desire to cry:
“I love you,” that there was only this night, this hour, in which to tell
Rhett what was in her mind. But there was something in his face that
stopped her and she was suddenly ashamed to speak of love when Melanie
was hardly cold.
“Well, God rest her,” he said heavily. “She was the only completely kind
person I ever knew.”
“Oh, Rhett!” she cried miserably, for his words brought up too vividly all
the kind things Melanie had ever done for her. “Why didn’t you come in
with me? It was dreadful—and I needed you so!”
“I couldn’t have borne it,” he said simply and for a moment he was
silent. Then he spoke with an effort and said, softly: “A very great lady.”
His somber gaze went past her and in his eyes was the same look she had
seen in the light of the flames the night Atlanta fell, when he told her he
was going off with the retreating army—the surprise of a man who knows
himself utterly, yet discovers in himself unexpected loyalties and emotions
and feels a faint self-ridicule at the discovery.
His moody eyes went over her shoulder as though he saw Melanie
silently passing through the room to the door. In the look of farewell on his
face there was no sorrow, no pain, only a speculative wonder at himself,
only a poignant stirring of emotions dead since boyhood, as he said again:
“A very great lady.”
Scarlett shivered and the glow went from her heart, the fine warmth,
the splendor which had sent her home on winged feet. She half-grasped
what was in Rhett’s mind as he said farewell to the only person in the world
he respected and she was desolate again with a terrible sense of loss that
was no longer personal. She could not wholly understand or analyze what
he was feeling, but it seemed almost as if she too had been brushed by
whispering skirts, touching her softly in a last caress. She was seeing
through Rhett’s eyes the passing, not of a woman but a legend—the gentle,
self-effacing but steel-spined women on whom the South had builded its
house in war and to whose proud and loving arms it had returned in defeat.
His eyes came back to her and his voice changed. Now it was light and
cool.
“So she’s dead. That makes it nice for you, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, how can you say such things,” she cried, stung, the quick tears
coming to her eyes. “You know how I loved her!”
“No, I can’t say I did. Most unexpected and it’s to your credit,
considering your passion for white trash, that you could appreciate her at
last.”
“How can you talk so? Of course I appreciated her! You didn’t. You
didn’t know her like I did! It isn’t in you to understand her—how good she
was—”
“Indeed? Perhaps not.”
“She thought for everybody except herself—why, her last words were
about you.”
There was a flash of genuine feeling in his eyes as he turned to her.
“What did she say?”
“Oh, not now, Rhett.”
“Tell me.”
His voice was cool but the hand he put on her wrist hurt. She did not
want to tell, this was not the way she had intended to lead up to the
subject of her love but his hand was urgent.
“She said—she said—‘Be kind to Captain Butler. He loves you so
much.’”
He stared at her and dropped her wrist. His eyelids went down, leaving
his face a dark blank. Suddenly he rose and going to the window, he drew
the curtains and looked out intently as if there were something to see
outside except blinding mist.
“Did she say anything else?” he questioned, not turning his head.
“She asked me to take care of little Beau and I said I would, like he was
my own boy.”
“What else?”
“She said—Ashley—she asked me to look after Ashley, too.”
He was silent for a moment and then he laughed softly.
“It’s convenient to have the first wife’s permission, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
He turned and even in her confusion she was surprised that there was no
mockery in his face. Nor was there any more interest in it than in the face
of a man watching the last act of a none-too-amusing comedy.
“I think my meaning’s plain enough. Miss Melly is dead. You certainly
have all the evidence you want to divorce me and you haven’t enough
reputation left for a divorce to hurt you. And you haven’t any religion left,
so the Church won’t matter. Then—Ashley and dreams come true with the
blessings of Miss Melly.”
“Divorce?” she cried. “No! No!” Incoherent for a moment, she leaped to
her feet and running to him caught his arm. “Oh, you’re all wrong! Terribly
wrong. I don’t want a divorce— I—” She stopped for she could find no
other words.
He put his hand under her chin, quietly turned her face up to the light
and looked for an intent moment into her eyes. She looked up at him, her
heart in her eyes, her lips quivering as she tried to speak. But she could
marshal no words because she was trying to find in his face some answering
emotions, some leaping light of hope, of joy. Surely he must know, now!
But the smooth dark blankness which had baffled her so often was all that
her frantic, searching eyes could find. He dropped her chin and, turning,
walked back to his chair and sprawled tiredly again, his chin on his breast,
his eyes looking up at her from under black brows in an impersonal
speculative way.
She followed him back to his chair, her hands twisting, and stood before
him.
“You are wrong,” she began again, finding words. “Rhett, tonight, when
I knew, I ran every step of the way home to tell you. Oh, darling, I—”
“You are tired,” he said, still watching her. “You’d better go to bed.”
“But I must tell you!”
“Scarlett,” he said heavily, “I don’t want to hear—anything.”
“But you don’t know what I’m going to say!”
“My pet, it’s written plainly on your face. Something, someone has made
you realize that the unfortunate Mr. Wilkes is too large a mouthful of Dead
Sea fruit for even you to chew. And that same something has suddenly set
my charms before you in a new and attractive light,” he sighed slightly.
“And it’s no use to talk about it.”
She drew a sharp surprised breath. Of course, he had always read her
easily. Heretofore she had resented it but now, after the first shock at her
own transparency, her heart rose with gladness and relief. He knew, he
understood and her task was miraculously made easy. No use to talk about
it! Of course he was bitter at her long neglect, of course he was mistrustful
of her sudden turnabout. She would have to woo him with kindness,
convince him with a rich outpouring of love, and what a pleasure it would
be to do it!
“Darling, I’m going to tell you everything,” she said, putting her hands
on the arm of his chair and leaning down to him. “I’ve been so wrong, such
a stupid fool—”
“Scarlett, don’t go on with this. Don’t be humble before me. I can’t bear
it. Leave us some dignity, some reticence to remember out of our marriage.
Spare us this last.”
She straightened up abruptly. Spare us this last? What did he mean by
“this last”? Last? This was their first, their beginning.
“But I will tell you,” she began rapidly, as if fearing his hand upon her
mouth, silencing her. “Oh, Rhett, I love you so, darling! I must have loved
you for years and I was such a fool I didn’t know it. Rhett, you must believe
me!”
He looked at her, standing before him, for a moment, a long look that
went to the back of her mind. She saw there was belief in his eyes but little
interest. Oh, was he going to be mean, at this of all times? To torment her,
pay her back in her own coin?
“Oh, I believe you,” he said at last. “But what of Ashley Wilkes?”
“Ashley!” she said, and made an impatient gesture. “I—I don’t believe
I’ve cared anything about him for ages. It was—well, a sort of habit I hung
onto from when I was a little girl. Rhett, I’d never even thought I cared
about him if I’d ever known what he was really like. He’s such a helpless,
poor-spirited creature, for all his prattle about truth and honor and—”
“No,” said Rhett. “If you must see him as he really is, see him straight.
He’s only a gentleman caught in a world he doesn’t belong in, trying to
make a poor best of it by the rules of the world that’s gone.”
“Oh, Rhett, don’t let’s talk of him! What does he matter now? Aren’t
you glad to know— I mean, now that I—”
As his tired eyes met hers, she broke off in embarrassment, shy as a girl
with her first beau. If he’d only make it easier for her! If only he would hold
out his arms, so she could crawl thankfully into his lap and lay her head on
his chest. Her lips on his could tell him better than all her stumbling
words. But as she looked at him, she realized that he was not holding her
off just to be mean. He looked drained and as though nothing she had said
was of any moment.
“Glad?” he said. “Once I would have thanked God, fasting, to hear you
say all of this. But, now, it doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter? What are you talking about? Of course, it matters!
Rhett, you do care, don’t you? You must care. Melly said you did.”
“Well, she was right, as far as she knew. But, Scarlett, did it ever occur
to you that even the most deathless love could wear out?”
She looked at him speechless, her mouth a round O.
“Mine wore out,” he went on, “against Ashley Wilkes and your insane
obstinacy that makes you hold on like a bulldog to anything you think you
want…. Mine wore out.”
“But love can’t wear out!”
“Yours for Ashley did.”
“But I never really loved Ashley!”
“Then, you certainly gave a good imitation of it—up till tonight.
Scarlett, I’m not upbraiding you, accusing you, reproaching you. That time
has passed. So spare me your defenses and your explanations. If you can
manage to listen to me for a few minutes without interrupting, I can
explain what I mean. Though, God knows, I see no need for explanations.
The truth’s so plain.”
She sat down, the harsh gas light falling on her white bewildered face.
She looked into the eyes she knew so well—and knew so little—listened to
his quiet voice saying words which at first meant nothing. This was the first
time he had ever talked to her in this manner, as one human being to
another, talked as other people talked, without flippancy, mockery or
riddles.
“Did it ever occur to you that I loved you as much as a man can love a
woman? Loved you for years before I finally got you? During the war I’d go
away and try to forget you, but I couldn’t and I always had to come back.
After the war I risked arrest, just to come back and find you. I cared so
much I believe I would have killed Frank Kennedy if he hadn’t died when
he did. I loved you but I couldn’t let you know it. You’re so brutal to those
who love you, Scarlett. You take their love and hold it over their heads like
a whip.”
Out of it all only the fact that he loved her meant anything. At the faint
echo of passion in his voice, pleasure and excitement crept back into her.
She sat, hardly breathing, listening, waiting.
“I knew you didn’t love me when I married you. I knew about Ashley,
you see. But, fool that I was, I thought I could make you care. Laugh, if you
like, but I wanted to take care of you, to pet you, to give you everything
you wanted. I wanted to marry you and protect you and give you a free rein
in anything that would make you happy—just as I did Bonnie. You’d had
such a struggle, Scarlett. No one knew better than I what you’d gone
through and I wanted you to stop fighting and let me fight for you. I wanted
you to play, like a child—for you were a child, a brave, frightened, bull-
headed child. I think you are still a child. No one but a child could be so
headstrong and so insensitive.”
His voice was calm and tired but there was something in the quality of it
that raised a ghost of memory in Scarlett. She had heard a voice like this
once before and at some other crisis of her life. Where had it been? The
voice of a man facing himself and his world without feeling, without
flinching, without hope.
Why—why—it had been Ashley in the wintry, windswept orchard at
Tara, talking of life and shadow shows with a tired calmness that had more
finality in its timbre than any desperate bitterness could have revealed.
Even as Ashley’s voice then had turned her cold with dread of things she
could not understand, so now Rhett’s words made her heart sink. His voice,
his manner, more than the content of his words, disturbed her, made her
realize that her pleasurable excitement of a few moments ago had been
untimely. Something was wrong, badly wrong. What it was she did not
know but she listened desperately, her eyes on his brown face, hoping to
hear words that would dissipate her fears.
“It was so obvious that we were meant for each other. So obvious that I
was the only man of your acquaintance who could love you after knowing
you as you really are—hard and greedy and unscrupulous, like me. I loved
you and I took the chance. I thought Ashley would fade out of your mind.
But,” he shrugged, “I tried everything I knew and nothing worked. And I
loved you so, Scarlett. If you had only let me, I could have loved you as
gently and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman. But I couldn’t let you
know, for I knew you’d think me weak and try to use my love against me.
And always—always there was Ashley. It drove me crazy. I couldn’t sit
across the table from you every night, knowing you wished Ashley was
sitting there in my place. And I couldn’t hold you in my arms at night and
know that—well, it doesn’t matter now. I wonder, now, why it hurt. That’s
what drove me to Belle. There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a
woman who loves you utterly and respects you for being a fine gentleman—
even if she is an illiterate whore. It soothed my vanity. You’ve never been
very soothing, my dear.”
“Oh, Rhett…” she began, miserable at the very mention of Belle’s name,
but he waved her to silence and went on.
“And then, that night when I carried you upstairs—I thought—I hoped
—I hoped so much I was afraid to face you the next morning, for fear I’d
been mistaken and you didn’t love me. I was so afraid you’d laugh at me I
went off and got drunk. And when I came back, I was shaking in my boots
and if you had come even halfway to meet me, had given me some sign, I
think I’d have kissed your feet. But you didn’t.”
“Oh, but Rhett, I did want you then but you were so nasty! I did want
you! I think—yes, that must have been when I first knew I cared about you.
Ashley—I never was happy about Ashley after that, but you were so nasty
that I—”
“Oh, well,” he said. “It seems we’ve been at cross purposes, doesn’t it?
But it doesn’t matter now. I’m only telling you, so you won’t ever wonder
about it all. When you were sick and it was my fault, I stood outside your
door, hoping you’d call for me, but you didn’t, and then I knew what a fool
I’d been and that it was all over.”
He stopped and looked through her and beyond her, even as Ashley had
often done, seeing something she could not see. And she could only stare
speechless at his brooding face.
“But then, there was Bonnie and I saw that everything wasn’t over, after
all. I liked to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl again, before the war
and poverty had done things to you. She was so like you, so willful, so
brave and gay and full of high spirits, and I could pet her and spoil her—
just as I wanted to pet you. But she wasn’t like you—she loved me. It was a
blessing that I could take the love you didn’t want and give it to her….
When she went, she took everything.”
Suddenly she was sorry for him, sorry with a completeness that wiped
out her own grief and her fear of what his words might mean. It was the
first time in her life she had ever been sorry for anyone without feeling
contemptuous as well, because it was the first time she had ever approached
understanding any other human being. And she could understand his
shrewd caginess, so like her own, his obstinate pride that kept him from
admitting his love for fear of a rebuff.
“Ah, darling,” she said coming forward, hoping he would put out his
arms and draw her to his knees. “Darling, I’m so sorry but I’ll make it all up
to you! We can be so happy, now that we know the truth and—Rhett—
look at me, Rhett! There—there can be other babies—not like Bonnie but
—”
“Thank you, no,” said Rhett, as if he were refusing a piece of bread. “I’ll
not risk my heart a third time.”
“Rhett, don’t say such things! Oh, what can I say to make you
understand? I’ve told you how sorry I am—”
“My darling, you’re such a child. You think that by saying, ‘I’m sorry,’ all
the errors and hurts of years past can be remedied, obliterated from the
mind, all the poison drawn from old wounds…. Take my handkerchief,
Scarlett. Never, at any crisis of your life, have I known you to have a
handkerchief.”
She took the handkerchief, blew her nose and sat down. It was obvious
that he was not going to take her in his arms. It was beginning to be
obvious that all his talk about loving her meant nothing. It was a tale of a
time long past, and he was looking at it as though it had never happened to
him. And that was frightening. He looked at her in an almost kindly way,
speculation in his eyes.
“How old are you, my dear? You never would tell me.”
“Twenty-eight,” she answered dully, muffled in the handkerchief.
“That’s not a vast age. It’s a young age to have gained the whole world
and lost your own soul, isn’t it? Don’t look frightened. I’m not referring to
hell fire to come for your affair with Ashley. I’m merely speaking
metaphorically. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve wanted two things.
Ashley and to be rich enough to tell the world to go to hell. Well, you are
rich enough and you’ve spoken sharply to the world and you’ve got Ashley,
if you want him. But all that doesn’t seem to be enough now.”
She was frightened but not at the thought of hell fire. She was thinking:
“But Rhett is my soul and I’m losing him. And if I lose him, nothing else
matters! No, not friends or money or—or anything. If only I had him I
wouldn’t even mind being poor again. No, I wouldn’t mind being cold
again or even hungry. But he can’t mean— Oh, he can’t!”
She wiped her eyes and said desperately:
“Rhett, if you once loved me so much, there must be something left for
me!”
“Out of it all I find only two things that remain and they are the two
things you hate the most—pity and an odd feeling of kindness.”
Pity! Kindness! “Oh, my God,” she thought despairingly. Anything but
pity and kindness. Whenever she felt these two emotions for anyone, they
went hand in hand with contempt. Was he contemptuous of her too?
Anything would be preferable to that. Even the cynical coolness of the war
days, the drunken madness that drove him the night he carried her up the
stairs, his hard fingers bruising her body, or the barbed drawling words that
she now realized had covered a bitter love. Anything except this
impersonal kindness that was written so plainly in his face.
“Then—then you mean I’ve ruined it all—that you don’t love me any
more?”
“That’s right.”
“But,” she said stubbornly, like a child who still feels that to state a
desire is to gain that desire, “but I love you!”
“That’s your misfortune.”
She looked up quickly to see if there was a jeer behind those words but
there was none. He was simply stating a fact. But it was a fact she still
would not believe—could not believe. She looked at him with slanting
eyes that burned with a desperate obstinacy and the sudden hard line of jaw
that sprang out through her soft cheek was Gerald’s jaw.
“Don’t be a fool, Rhett! I can make—”
He flung up a hand in mock horror and his black brows went up in the
old sardonic crescents.
“Don’t look so determined, Scarlett! You frighten me. I see you are
contemplating the transfer of your tempestuous affections from Ashley to
me and I fear for my liberty and my peace of mind. No, Scarlett, I will not
be pursued as the luckless Ashley was pursued. Besides, I am going away.”
Her jaw trembled before she clenched her teeth to steady it. Go away?
No, anything but that! How could life go on without him? Everyone had
gone from her, everyone who mattered except Rhett. He couldn’t go. But
how could she stop him? She was powerless against his cool mind, his
disinterested words.
“I am going away. I intended to tell you when you came home from
Marietta.”
“You are deserting me?”
“Don’t be the neglected, dramatic wife, Scarlett. The role isn’t
becoming. I take it, then, you do not want a divorce or even a separation?
Well, then, I’ll come back often enough to keep gossip down.”
“Damn gossip!” she said fiercely. “It’s you I want. Take me with you!”
“No,” he said, and there was finality in his voice. For a moment she was
on the verge of an outburst of childish wild tears. She could have thrown
herself on the floor, cursed and screamed and drummed her heels. But some
remnant of pride, of common sense stiffened her. She thought, if I did, he’d
only laugh, or just look at me. I mustn’t bawl; I mustn’t beg. I mustn’t do
anything to risk his contempt. He must respect me even—even if he
doesn’t love me.
She lifted her chin and managed to ask quietly:
“Where will you go?”
There was a faint gleam of admiration in his eyes as he answered.
“Perhaps to England—or to Paris. Perhaps to Charleston to try to make
peace with my people.”
“But you hate them! I’ve heard you laugh at them so often and—”
He shrugged.
“I still laugh—but I’ve reached the end of roaming, Scarlett. I’m forty-
five—the age when a man begins to value some of the things he’s thrown
away so lightly in youth, the clannishness of families, honor and security,
roots that go deep— Oh, no! I’m not recanting, I’m not regretting
anything I’ve ever done. I’ve had a hell of a good time—such a hell of a
good time that it’s begun to pall and now I want something different. No, I
never intend to change more than my spots. But I want the outer
semblance of the things I used to know, the utter boredom of respectability
—other people’s respectability, my pet, not my own—the calm dignity life
can have when it’s lived by gentle folks, the genial grace of days that are
gone. When I lived those days I didn’t realize the slow charm of them—”
Again Scarlett was back in the windy orchard of Tara and there was the
same look in Rhett’s eyes that had been in Ashley’s eyes that day. Ashley’s
words were as clear in her ears as though he and not Rhett were speaking.
Fragments of words came back to her and she quoted, parrot-like: “A
glamor to it—a perfection, a symmetry like Grecian art.”
Rhett said sharply: “Why did you say that? That’s what I meant.”
“It was something that—that Ashley said once, about the old days.”
He shrugged and the light went out of his eyes.
“Always Ashley,” he said and was silent for a moment.
“Scarlett, when you are forty-five, perhaps you will know what I’m
talking about and then perhaps you, too, will be tired of imitation gentry
and shoddy manners and cheap emotions. But I doubt it. I think you’ll
always be more attracted by glister than by gold. Anyway, I can’t wait that
long to see. And I have no desire to wait. It just doesn’t interest me. I’m
going to hunt in old towns and old countries where some of the old times
must still linger. I’m that sentimental. Atlanta’s too raw for me, too new.”
“Stop,” she said suddenly. She had hardly heard anything he had said.
Certainly her mind had not taken it in. But she knew she could no longer
endure with any fortitude the sound of his voice when there was no love in
it.
He paused and looked at her quizzically.
“Well, you get my meaning, don’t you?” he questioned, rising to his feet.
She threw out her hands to him, palms up, in the age-old gesture of
appeal and her heart, again, was in her face.
“No,” she cried. “All I know is that you do not love me and you are
going away! Oh, my darling, if you go, what shall I do?”
For a moment he hesitated as if debating whether a kind lie were kinder
in the long run than the truth. Then he shrugged.
“Scarlett, I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and
glue them together and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as
new. What is broken is broken—and I’d rather remember it as it was at its
best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. Perhaps, if I
were younger—” he sighed. “But I’m too old to believe in such
sentimentalities as clean slates and starting all over. I’m too old to shoulder
the burden of constant lies that go with living in polite disillusionment. I
couldn’t live with you and lie to you and I certainly couldn’t lie to myself. I
can’t even lie to you now. I wish I could care what you do or where you go,
but I can’t.”
He drew a short breath and said lightly but softly:
“My dear, I don’t give a damn.”
* * *
She silently watched him go up the stairs, feeling that she would strangle at
the pain in her throat. With the sound of his feet dying away in the upper
hall was dying the last thing in the world that mattered. She knew now
that there was no appeal of emotion or reason which would turn that cool
brain from its verdict. She knew now that he had meant every word he
said, lightly though some of them had been spoken. She knew because she
sensed in him something strong, unyielding, implacable—all the qualities
she had looked for in Ashley and never found.
She had never understood either of the men she had loved and so she
had lost them both. Now, she had a fumbling knowledge that, had she ever
understood Ashley, she would never have loved him; had she ever
understood Rhett, she would never have lost him. She wondered forlornly
if she had ever really understood anyone in the world.
There was a merciful dullness in her mind now, a dullness that she knew
from long experience would soon give way to sharp pain, even as severed
tissues, shocked by the surgeon’s knife, have a brief instant of insensibility
before their agony begins.
“I won’t think of it now,” she thought grimly, summoning up her old
charm. “I’ll go crazy if I think about losing him now. I’ll think of it
tomorrow.”
“But,” cried her heart, casting aside the charm and beginning to ache, “I
can’t let him go! There must be some way!”
“I won’t think of it now,” she said again, aloud, trying to push her misery
to the back of her mind, trying to find some bulwark against the rising tide
of pain. “I’ll—why, I’ll go home to Tara tomorrow,” and her spirits lifted
faintly.
She had gone back to Tara once in fear and defeat and she had emerged
from its sheltering walls strong and armed for victory. What she had done
once, some-how—please God, she could do again! How, she did not know.
She did not want to think of that now. All she wanted was a breathing
space in which to hurt, a quiet place to lick her wounds, a haven in which
to plan her campaign. She thought of Tara and it was as if a gentle cool
hand were stealing over her heart. She could see the white house gleaming
welcome to her through the reddening autumn leaves, feel the quiet hush
of the country twilight coming down over her like a benediction, feel the
dews falling on the acres of green bushes starred with fleecy white, see the
raw color of the red earth and the dismal dark beauty of the pines on the
rolling hills.
She felt vaguely comforted, strengthened by the picture, and some of
her hurt and frantic regret was pushed from the top of her mind. She stood
for a moment remembering small things, the avenue of dark cedars leading
to Tara, the banks of cape jessamine bushes, vivid green against the white
walls, the fluttering white curtains. And Mammy would be there. Suddenly
she wanted Mammy desperately, as she had wanted her when she was a
little girl, wanted the broad bosom on which to lay her head, the gnarled
black hand on her hair. Mammy, the last link with the old days.
With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it
stared them in the face, she raised her chin. She could get Rhett back. She
knew she could. There had never been a man she couldn’t get, once she set
her mind upon him.
“I’ll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I’ll
think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.”
THE BOOK THAT INSPIRED
THE MOVIE!
“Beyond a doubt one of the most remarkable first novels produced by an
American writer. It is also one of her best.”
—The New York Times
“The best novel to have ever come out of the South… it is unsurpassed in
the whole of American writing.”
—The Washington Post
“Facinating and unforgettable! A remarkable book, a spectacular book, a
book that will not be forgotten!”
—Chicago Tribune
“For sheer readability I can think of nothing it must give way before. Miss
Mitchell proves herself a staggeringly gifted storyteller.”
—The New Yorker
We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.
Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and info on the
latest new releases and other great eBooks from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
Scribner
A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1936 by Macmillan Publishing Company, a division of Macmillan, Inc.
Copyright renewed © 1964 by Stephens Mitchell and Trust Company of Georgia as Executors of
Margaret Mitchell Marsh
Preface copyright © 1996 by Pat Conroy
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form
whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of
the Americas, New York, NY 10020
Scribner trade Paperback edition May 2011
SCRIBNER and design are registered trademarks of The Gale Group, Inc used under license by
Simon & Schuster, Inc. the publisher of this work.
ISBN: 978-0-684-83068-1
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3562-1(pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-4165-7346-3(ebk)
