And there was no cold, no rain, no weakness—only the burning of Rhett’s lips on her lips, on her body, the heat of his hands. And the power she felt under her fingers when she gripped his shoulders. And the pounding of her heart in her throat against his lips, the strong beat of his heart beneath her palms when she tangled her fingers in the thick curling hair on his chest.
Yes! I did remember it, it wasn’t a dream. Yes, this is the dark swirling that draws me in and closes out the world and makes me alive, so alive, and free and spinning up to the heart of the sun. “Yes!” she shouted again and again, meeting Rhett’s passion with her own, her demands the same as his. Until in the swirling, spiraling rapture there were no longer words or thoughts, only a union beyond mind, beyond time, beyond the world.
32
He loves me! What a fool I was to doubt what I knew. Scarlett’s swollen lips curved in a lazy surfeited smile, and she slowly opened her eyes.
Rhett was sitting beside her. His arms were wrapped across his knees, his face hidden in the hollow they made.
Scarlett stretched luxuriantly. For the first time she felt the rasping sand against her skin, noticed her surroundings. Why, it’s pouring down rain. We’ll catch our death. We’ll have to find some shelter before we make love again. Her dimples flickered, and she stifled a giggle. Maybe not, we sure didn’t pay any attention to the weather just now.
She reached out her hand and traced Rhett’s spine with her fingernails.
He jerked away as if she’d burned him, turning in a rush to face her, then springing to his feet. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” he said. “Try to get some more rest if you can. I’m going to look for some place to dry out and build a fire. There are shacks on all these islands.”
“I’ll go with you.” Scarlett struggled to get up. Rhett’s sweater was across her legs, and she was still wearing hers. She felt burdened by their water-laden weight.
“No. You stay here.” He was walking away, up the steep dunes. Scarlett gaped foolishly, not believing her eyes.
“Rhett! You can’t leave me. I won’t let you.”
But he kept climbing. She could see only his broad back with his wet shirt clinging to it.
At the top of the dune he halted. His head turned slowly from side to side. Then his hunched shoulders squared. He turned and slid recklessly down the steep slope.
“There’s a cottage. I know where we are. Get up.” Rhett held his hand out to help Scarlett rise. She clasped it eagerly.
The cottages that some Charlestonians had built on the nearby islands were designed to capture the cooler sea breezes in the hot humid days of the long Southern summer. They were retreats from the city and the city’s formality, little more than unornamented shacks with deep shaded porches and weathered clapboard siding perched on creosoted timbers to raise them above the blistering summer sands. In the cold driving rain the shelter Rhett had found looked derelict and inadequate to stand against the buffeting wind. But he knew these island houses had stood for generations, and had kitchen fireplaces where meals were prepared. Exactly the shelter needed for shipwreck survivors.
He broke open the door to the cottage with a single kick. Scarlett followed him inside. Why was he so silent? He’d hardly said a word to her, not even when he was carrying her in his arms through the thicket of low shrubs at the base of the sand dunes. I want him to talk, Scarlett thought, I want to hear his voice saying how much he loves me. Lord knows he made me wait long enough.
He found a worn patchwork quilt in a cupboard. “Take off those wet things and wrap up in this,” he said. He tossed the quilt onto her lap. “I’ll have a fire started in a minute.”
Scarlett dropped her torn pantalets on top of the soaked sweater and dried herself on the quilt. It was soft, and it felt good. She wrapped it shawl-fashion then sat down again on the hard kitchen chair. The quilt made an envelope for her feet on the floor. She was dry for the first time in hours, but she began to shiver.
Rhett brought dry wood in from a box on the porch outside the kitchen. In a few minutes there was a small fire in the big fireplace. Almost at once it bit into the teepee of logs and a tall orange burst of flame leapt into crackling life. It lit his brooding face.
Scarlett hobbled across the room to warm herself at the fire. “Why don’t you get out of your wet things, too, Rhett? I’ll let you have the quilt to dry off on; it feels wonderful.” She dropped her eyes as if she were embarrassed by her boldness. Her thick lashes fluttered on her cheeks. Rhett did not respond.
“I’ll just get soaked again when I go back out,” he said. “We’re only a couple of miles from Fort Moultrie. I’ll go get help.” Rhett walked into the small pantry adjoining the kitchen.
“Bother Fort Moultrie!” Scarlett wished he’d stop rooting around in the pantry like that. How could she talk to him when he was in another room?
Rhett emerged with a bottle of whiskey in one hand. “The shelves are pretty bare,” he said with a brief smile, “but the necessities are there.” He opened a cupboard and took down two cups. “Clean enough,” he said. “I’ll pour us a drink.” He set cups and bottle down on the table.
“I don’t want a drink. I want—”
He interrupted before she could tell him what she wanted. “I need a drink,” he said. He poured the cup half full, drank it in one long swallow, then shook his head. “No wonder they left it here; it’s real rotgut. Still…” He poured again.
Scarlett watched him with a look of amused indulgence. Poor darling, how nervous he is. When she spoke her voice was heavy with loving patience. “You don’t have to be so skittery, Rhett. It’s not like you compromised me or anything. We’re two married people who love each other, that’s all.”
Rhett stared at her over the rim of the cup, then put it carefully down on the table. “Scarlett, what happened out there had nothing to do with love. It was a celebration of survival, that’s all. You see it after every battle in wartime. The men who don’t get killed fall on the first woman they see and prove they’re still alive by using her body. In this case you used mine, too, because you’d narrowly escaped dying. It had nothing to do with love.”
The harshness of his words took Scarlett’s breath away.
But then she remembered his hoarse voice in her ear, the words “my darling,” “my life,” “I love you,” repeated a hundred times. No matter what Rhett might say, he loved her. She knew it in the innermost center of her soul, the place where there were no lies. He’s still afraid that I don’t really love him! That’s why he won’t admit how much he loves me.
She began to move toward him. “You can say anything you like, Rhett, but it won’t change the truth. I love you and you love me and we made love to prove it to each other.”
Rhett drank the whiskey. Then he laughed harshly. “I never thought you were a silly little romantic, Scarlett. You disappoint me. You used to have some sense in your hard little head. A primitive, hasty coupling should never be confused with love. Though God knows it happens often enough to fill churches with wedding ceremonies.”
Scarlett continued to walk. “You can talk till you’re blue, but that won’t change anything.” She put a hand to her face and wiped away the tears that were pouring from her eyes. She was very close to him now. She could smell the salt on his skin, the whiskey on his breath. “You do love me,” she sobbed, “you do, you do.” The quilt fell to the floor when she let go of it to reach out to Rhett. “Take me in your arms and tell me you don’t love me and then I’ll believe it.”
Rhett’s hands abruptly caught her head and he kissed her with bruising possessive strength. Scarlett’s arms closed behind his neck as his hands moved down her throat and her shoulders, and she gave herself up to abandonment.
But Rhett’s fingers suddenly closed around her wrists and he pried her arms apart, away from his neck, away from him, and his mouth was no longer seeking hers, his body was drawing away.
“W
hy?” she cried. “You want me.”
He cast her away, releasing her wrists, stumbling backwards in the first uncontrolled action she had ever seen him take. “Yes, by Christ! I do want you, and sicken for you. You’re a poison in my blood, Scarlett, a sickness of my soul. I’ve known men with a hunger for opium that was like my hunger for you. I know what happens to an addict. He becomes enslaved, then destroyed. It almost happened to me, but I escaped. I won’t risk it again. I won’t destroy myself for you.” He crashed through the door and out into the storm.
The wind howled through the open door, icy against Scarlett’s bare skin. She grabbed up the quilt from the floor and wrapped it around her. She pushed against the wind to the yawning doorway but could see nothing through the rain. It took all her strength to pull the door closed. She had very little strength left.
Her lips still felt warm from Rhett’s kiss. But the rest of her was shivering. She curled up in front of the fire with the quilt wrapped securely around her. She was tired, so very tired. She’d have a little nap until Rhett came back.
She slid into a sleep so profound that it was more nearly coma.
* * *
“Exhaustion,” said the army doctor Rhett brought back from Fort Moultrie, “and exposure. It’s a miracle your wife isn’t dead, Mr. Butler. Let’s hope she doesn’t lose the use of her legs; the circulation’s all but shut down. Wrap her in those blankets and let’s get her back to the fort.” Rhett swaddled Scarlett’s limp body quickly and lifted her in his arms.
“Here, now, give her to the sergeant. You’re not in such good condition yourself.”
Scarlett’s eyes opened. Her clouded mind registered the blue uniforms around her, then her eyes rolled back in her head. The doctor closed the eyelids with fingers practiced in battlefield medicine. “Better hurry,” he said, “she’s slipping away.”
“Drink this, honey.” It was a woman’s voice, soft yet authoritative, a voice she almost recognized. Scarlett opened her lips obediently. “That’s a good girl, take another little sip. No, I don’t want to see no ugly screwed-up face like that. Don’t you know if you make that kind of face it’s liable to stick? Then what’ll you do? A pretty little girl turned ugly. That’s better. Now open up. Wider. You going to drink this good hot milk and medicine if it takes all week. Come on, now, lamb. I’ll stir some more sugar in it.”
No, it wasn’t Mammy’s voice. So close, so nearly the same, but not the same. Weak tears seeped from the corners of Scarlett’s closed eyes. For a minute she’d thought she was home, at Tara, with Mammy tending her. She forced her eyes to open, to focus. The black woman bending over her smiled. Her smile was beautiful. Compassionate. Wise. Loving. Patient. Unyieldingly bossy. Scarlett smiled back.
“There, now, ain’t that just what I told them? What this little girl need, I say, is a hot brick in her bed and a mustard plaster on her chest and old Rebekah rubbing out the chill from her bones, with a milk toddy and a talk with Jesus to finish the cure. I done talk with Jesus while I rub, and He bring you back like I knowed He would. Lord, I tell Him, this ain’t no real work like Lazarus, this here is just a little girl feeling poorly. It won’t hardly take a minute of Your everlasting time to cast Your eye this way and bring her back.
“He done so, and I’m going to thank Him. Soon’s you finish drinking your milk. Come on, honey, there’s two fresh spoons of sugar in it. Drink it down. You don’t want to keep Jesus waiting for Rebekah to say thank You, do you? That don’t set too well in Heaven.”
Scarlett swallowed. Then she gulped. The sweetened milk tasted better than anything she’d tasted in weeks. When it was all gone she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand to erase the milk mustache. “I’m mighty hungry, Rebekah, could I have something to eat?”
The big black woman nodded. “Just a second,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and put her palms together in prayer. Her lips moved silently and she rocked back and forth, giving thanks in an intimate talk with her Lord.
When she finished, she pulled the coverlet up over Scarlett’s shoulders and tucked it around them. Scarlett was asleep. The medicine in the milk was laudanum.
Scarlett tossed fitfully while she slept. When she thrashed off the coverlet, Rebekah tucked her in again and stroked her forehead until the lines of distress were soothed away. But Rebekah could do nothing about the dreams.
They were disjointed, chaotic, fragments of Scarlett’s memories and fears. There was hunger, the never-ending desperate hunger of the bad days at Tara. And Yankee soldiers, coming closer and closer to Atlanta, looming in the shadows of the piazza outside her window, handling her and whispering that her legs would have to come off, sprawling in a pool of blood on the floor at Tara, the blood spurting, spreading, becoming a torrent of red that rose into a mountainous wave higher and still higher over a screaming small Scarlett. And there was cold, with ice covering trees and shrivelling flowers and forming a shell around her so that she couldn’t move and couldn’t be heard although she was calling “Rhett, Rhett, Rhett come back” inside the icicles that were falling from her lips. Her mother passed through her dream, and Scarlett smelled lemon verbena, but Ellen never spoke. Gerald O’Hara jumped a fence, then another, then fence after fence into infinity, sitting backwards on a shining white stallion that was singing with Gerald in a human voice about Scarlett in a Low Back’d Car. The voices changed, became women’s voices, became hushed. She couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Scarlett licked her dry lips and opened her eyes. Why, it’s Melly. Oh, she looks so worried, poor thing. “Don’t be frightened,” Scarlett said hoarsely. “It’s all right. He’s dead. I shot him.”
“She been having a nightmare,” said Rebekah.
“The bad dreams are all over now, Scarlett. The doctor said you’re going to be well in no time at all.” Anne Hampton’s dark eyes were shining with earnestness.
Eleanor Butler’s face appeared over her shoulder. “We’ve come to take you home, my dear,” she said.
“This is ridiculous,” Scarlett complained. “I can perfectly well walk.” Rebekah clamped a hand on her shoulder and continued to push the wheelchair slowly along the crushed oyster-shell road. “I feel like a fool,” grumbled Scarlett, but she slumped back in the chair. Her head was throbbing with sharp dagger-like pains. The rainstorm had brought back weather suitable for February. The air was crisp, with a bite in the wind that was still blowing. At least Miss Eleanor brought my fur cape, she thought. I must have had a mighty close call if I’m allowed to wear the furs she thought were so showy.
“Where is Rhett? Why isn’t he taking me home?”
“I wouldn’t let him go out again,” said Mrs. Butler firmly. “I sent for our doctor and told Manigo to put Rhett straight to bed. He was blue with cold.”
Anne spoke quietly, bending near Scarlett’s ear. “Miss Eleanor was alarmed when the storm came up so suddenly. We rushed from the Home to the mooring basin and when they said the boat hadn’t come back she got frantic. I doubt that she sat down once all afternoon, she was just pacing back and forth on the piazza looking out into the rain.”
Under a nice roof, thought Scarlett impatiently. It’s all well and good for Anne to sound so concerned for Miss Eleanor, but she wasn’t the one freezing to death!
“My son told me you worked a miracle tending his wife,” Miss Eleanor said to Rebekah. “I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you.”
“Wasn’t me, Missus, it was the good Lord. I talked to Jesus for her, poor little shivering thing. I said this ain’t Lazarus, Lord…”
While Rebekah repeated her story to Mrs. Butler, Anne answered Scarlett’s question about Rhett. He had waited until the doctor said that Scarlett was out of danger, then he’d taken the ferry to Charleston to set his mother’s mind at rest, knowing how worried she must be. “It gave us all a shock when we saw a Yankee soldier coming through the gate,” Anne laughed. “He’d borrowed dry clothes from the sergeant.”
* * *
Sca
rlett refused to leave the ferry in the wheelchair. She insisted that she was perfectly capable of walking to the house and she did walk, stepping out as if nothing had happened.
But she was tired when they arrived, so tired that she accepted Anne’s help to climb the stairs. And after a tray with a hot bean soup and corn muffins, she fell again into a deep sleep.
There were no nightmares this time. She was in the familiar soft luxury of linen sheets and feather mattress, and she knew that Rhett was only a few steps away. She slept for fourteen strength-restoring hours.
She saw the flowers the minute she woke up. Hothouse roses. There was an envelope propped against the vase. Scarlett reached greedily for it.
His bold slashing handwriting was starkly black on the cream-colored paper. Scarlett touched it lovingly before she began to read.
There is nothing that I can say about what happened yesterday except that I am profoundly ashamed and sorry to have been the cause of such great pain and danger for you.
Scarlett wriggled with pleasure.
Your courage and valiant spirits were truly heroic, and I shall always regard you with admiration and respect.
I regret bitterly all that occurred after we escaped from the long ordeal. I said things to you that no man should say to a woman, and my actions were reprehensible.
I cannot, however, deny the truth of anything I said. I must not and will not ever see you again.
According to our agreement, you have the right to remain in Charleston at my mother’s house until April. I am frankly hoping that you will not choose to do so, because I will visit neither the city house nor Dunmore Landing until I receive information that you have returned to Atlanta. You cannot find me, Scarlett. Don’t try.