On the Stairs
Watching him going up the stairs, the paralyzing pain was strangling her, in her throat and her heart.
Oh, no, how could she let him go? His footsteps going up the stairs was the dying sound of the last thing in the world that mattered to her. No, she couldn't let him go, not before she fought her last fight. Nothing mattered if he left. Nothing, neither his respect nor her pride.
"Rhett!" She screamed. Lifting her skirt up, she ran up the stairs madly and stopped one step above him.
He stopped, turned and stared at his petite wife. "Scarlett," he said impatiently, throwing up his arms, "we are finished!"
"Damn you!" She said fiercely, "No, we are finished when I say we are!" She stomped her foot on the stairs, a loud sound echoing around the empty hall.
"Rhett Butler, the all mighty captain, the glorious blockade runner! Yes, you don't give a damn, you can finish, you can run! But this is the only thing you do well, one thing, you run. You always run away from me." She stared into her husband's black eyes in fury. At the same height as him for the first time, she attempted, for the first time in her life, to look into his eyes and his soul, a dark nonchalant indifferent soul.
Her pale cheeks flushed with red hot rage, her sparkling green eyes emitted an angry fire, gone was her subdued demeanor a moment ago, reemerged a headstrong stubborn young girl who never knew defeat.
"You ran away, leaving us in the middle of the road to Tara during the war. You could have had me if you came home with me. But no, you ran away, and I returned to a home where my mother was dead and my father lost his mind, and I was the only one carrying the weary load. You could have had me when I visited you in that Yankee jail, and I begged you. But no, what have you done? You humbled me and refused to help me. You let me leave empty hand and humiliated, and I had to fend for myself." She stopped her tantrum, gasping for the air as if her anger choked her. She closed her turbulent eyes for a moment as if the pain would go away if she wasn't staring at her tormentor in front of her, her husband.
When she opened her eyes, her tormentor was staring at her, blankly, indifferently. A defeated voice flew out from her trembling lips, "And that night ... you had me, you brutally used me, then you ran away, to that creature ... for three days. You said you were shaking in your boots when you returned, but have you realized how mean and nasty you were, and how have you humiliated me in front of the whole Atlanta. Then you blamed me for you running away again!"
"Stop it, Scarlett!"
She saw his swarthy face changed, from calm indifference to mild sadness and then to anger. She had reached him, somehow, in some way. There! I have his damn now!
"Shall I remind you some more? How many times have you had some nonsense business trips or night outings to stay away from me? God knows what you were doing on those trips and those nights? You were always running away from me! How could I know you loved me all those years?"
She stared into his dark eyes, they had become impervious and blank. He still doesn't care!
"You said I would take others love and hold it over their heads like a whip. You know what? You just did it to me." She laughed in a trembling voice. "For years, you have whipped me for I didn't love you. But tonight, after twelve years, you finally have me, you have me telling you that I love you. Then what do you do? You whip me, you don't give a damn, you are going to run away! Even after I lost my only friend."
He was staring at her, a blank mask was laying firmly across his face as if he was patiently waiting for a little girl's tantrum to pass.
"Oh, you are coward!" A familiar ghost of memory took over her. "I told you on the way to Tara when you left me, and I am telling you now."
Straightened her shoulders, she knew that her fate had been sealed, she must take the rest of the journey by herself. "On the road to Tara, I told you that I hoped a cannon ball landed right on you, blew you to a million pieces. And now, you can go on! I will survive, I always have and I always will. I hope the Charleston old guards suffocate you, strangle you, and the ocean waves drown you and bury you in the bottom of the deep sea! I don't want to ever see you again!"
"I believe I follow your general idea," he chuckled sarcastically.
"Oh, you cad! You low-down varmint!"
She could not think of anything else to penetrate his blank indifference, anything crushing enough. She did only what she knew, she drew back her arm, with all the force she had left, she swung her arm to slap him across his face.
…
"Oh, no, no...!"
A screaming echoed in the empty hall, followed by the tumbling of a body rolling down the stairs, and a thunder of its landing heavily at the bottom of the stairs.
...