a wilderness › 2015年07月
There was a glow of grim
2015年07月29日
There were hurried stumbling steps in the upper hall, a pause and then more steps, weak dragging steps now, punctuated by metallic clankings. A sense of time and reality coming back to her, Scarlett looked up and saw Melanie at the top of the stairs, clad only in the ragged chemise which served her as a nightgown, her weak arm weighed down with Charles’ saber. Melanie’s eyes took in the scene below in its entirety, the sprawling blue-clad body in the red pool, the sewing box beside him, Scarlett, barefooted and gray-faced, clutching the long pistol.
In silence her eyes met Scarlett’s. There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett’s own bosom.
“Why—why—she’s like me! She understands how I feel!” thought Scarlett in that long moment “She’d have done the same thing!”
With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl for whom she had never had any feelings but of dislike and contempt. Now, straggling against hatred for Ashley’s wife, there surged a feeling of admiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion that beneath the gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there was a thin flashing blade of unbreakable steel, felt too that there were banners and bugles of courage in Melanie’s quiet blood.
“Scarlett! Scarlett!” shrilled the weak frightened voices of Suellen and Carreen, muffled by their closed door, and Wade’s voice screamed “Auntee! Auntee!” Swiftly Melanie put her finger to her lips and, laying the sword on the top step, she painfully made her way down the upstairs hall and opened the door of the sick room.
“Don’t be scared, chickens!” came her voice with teasing gaiety. “Your big sister was trying to clean the rust off Charles’ pistol and it went off and nearly scared her to death!” ... “Now, Wade Hampton, Mama just shot off your dear Papa’s pistol! When you are bigger, she will let you shoot it.”
“What a cool liar!” thought Scarlett with admiration. “I couldn’t have thought that quickly. But why lie? They’ve got to know I’ve done it.”
She looked down at the body again and now revulsion came over her as her rage and fright melted away, and her knees began to quiver with the reaction. Melanie dragged herself to the top step again and started down, holding onto the banisters, her pale lower lip caught between her teeth.
“Go back to bed, silly, you’ll kill yourself!” Scarlett cried, but the half-naked Melanie made her painful way down into the lower hall.
“Scarlett,” she whispered, “we must get him out of here and bury him. He may not be alone and if they find him here—” She steadied herself on Scarlett’s arm.
“He must be alone,” said Scarlett. “I didn’t see anyone else from the upstairs window. He must be a deserter.”
“Even if he is alone, no one must know about it. The negroes might talk and then they’d come and get you. Scarlett, we must get him hidden before the folks come back from the swamp.”
Her mind prodded to action by the feverish urgency of Melanie’s voice, Scarlett thought hard.
“I could bury him in the corner of the garden under the arbor—the ground is soft there where Pork dug up the whisky barrel. But how will I get him there?”
“We’ll both take a leg and drag him,” said Melanie firmly.
Reluctantly, Scarlett’s admiration went still higher.
Posted by a wilderness at
10:43
│Comments(0)
A pain as fierce as though
2015年07月22日
“Dr. Meade says it will be here in late August or September,” she said. “I’ve thought—but I wasn’t sure till today. Oh, Scarlett, isn’t it wonderful? I’ve so envied you Wade and so wanted a baby. And I was so afraid that maybe I wasn’t ever going to have one and, darling, I want a dozen!”
Scarlett had been combing her hair, preparing for bed, when Melanie spoke and she stopped, the comb in mid-air tr90 ageloc.
“Dear God!” she said and, for a moment, realization did not come. Then there suddenly leaped to her mind the closed door of Melanie’s bedroom and a knifelike pain went through her, a pain as fierce as though Ashley had been her own husband and had been unfaithful to her Mask House. A baby. Ashley’s baby. Oh, how could he, when he loved her and not Melanie?
“I know you’re surprised,” Melanie rattled on, breathlessly. “And isn’t it too wonderful? Oh, Scarlett, I don’t know how I shall ever write Ashley! It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if I could tell him or—or—well, not say anything and just let him notice gradually, you know—”
“Dear God!” said Scarlett, almost sobbing, as she dropped the comb and caught at the marble top of the dresser for support.
“Darling, don’t look like that! You know having a baby isn’t so bad. You said so yourself. And you mustn’t worry about me, though you are sweet to be so upset. Of course, Dr. Meade said I was—was,” Melanie blushed, “quite narrow but that perhaps I shouldn’t have any trouble and— Scarlett, did you write Charlie and tell him when you found out about Wade, or did your mother do it or maybe Mr. O’Hara? Oh, dear, if I only had a mother to do it! I just don’t see how—”
“Hush!” said Scarlett, violently Mask House. “Hush!”
“Oh, Scarlett, I’m so stupid! I’m sorry. I guess all happy people are selfish. I forgot about Charlie, just for the moment—”
“Hush!” said Scarlett again, fighting to control her face and make her emotions quiet. Never, never must Melanie see or suspect how she felt.
Melanie, the most tactful of women, had tears in her eyes at her own cruelty. How could she have brought back to Scarlett the terrible memories of Wade being born months after poor Charlie was dead? How could she have been so thoughtless?
“Let me help you undress, dearest,” she said humbly. “And I’ll rub your head for you.”
“You leave me alone,” said Scarlett, her face like stone. And Melanie, bursting into tears of self-condemnation, fled the room, leaving Scarlett to a tearless bed, with wounded pride, disillusionment and jealousy for bedfellows.
Posted by a wilderness at
00:30
│Comments(0)
everyone here tonight
2015年07月18日
Oh, well, I don’t know—not happiness or love, anyway.”
“Generally it can. And when it can’t it can buy some of the most remarkable substitutes.”
“And have you so much money, Captain Butler?”
“What an ill-bred question, Mrs. Hamilton. I’m surprised. But, yes. For a young man cut off without a shilling in early youth, I’ve done very well . And I’m sure I’ll clean up a million on the blockade.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh, yes! What most people don’t seem to realize is that there is just as much money to be made out of the wreckage of a civilization as from the upbuilding of one.”
“And what does all that mean?”
“Your family and my family and everyone here tonight made their money out of changing a wilderness into a civilization. That’s empire building Colocation Service. There’s good money in empire building. But, there’s more in empire wrecking.”
“It will only be a few minutes. I’m going to bid you in for the next reel—and the next and the next.”
“Oh, no, I couldn’t! You mustn’t! My reputation will be mined.”
“It’s in shreds already, so what does another dance matter? Maybe I’ll give the other boys a chance after I’ve had five or six, but I must have the last one.”
“Oh, all right. I know I’m crazy but I don’t care. I don’t care a bit what anybody says. I’m so tired of sitting at home. I’m going to dance and dance—”
“And not wear black? I loathe funeral crêpe.”
“Oh, I couldn’t take off mourning—Captain Butler reenex , you must not hold me so tightly. I’ll be mad at you if you do.”
“And you look gorgeous when you are mad. I’ll squeeze you again—there—just to see if you will really get mad. You have no idea how charming you were that day at Twelve Oaks when you were mad and throwing things.”
“Oh, please—won’t you forget that?”
“No, it is one of my most priceless memories—a delicately nurtured Southern belle with her Irish up— You are very Irish, you know.”
“Oh, dear, there’s the end of the music and there’s Aunt Pittypat coming out of the back room. I know Mrs. Merriwether must have told her. Oh, for goodness’ sakes, let’s walk over and look out the window. I don’t want her to catch me now. Her eyes are as big as saucers.”
Posted by a wilderness at
03:34
│Comments(0)