Disclaimer - all characters belong to MM and her estate. I just amuse myself. Thanks for the reviews - Helen SES, your comment made me laugh. Remind me to tell you the email I accidentally sent to the wrong guy, way back in my wild days. Technology is a curse. It's a good thing I am so peaceful now.
The Fall - Chapter 4
Scarlett's vision of sleep dissolved at the sound of a carriage drawing up in front of the house, a knock on the front door, and a burst of voices into the hallway. Miss Eleanore and Rosemary had arrived, attired in sensible dark travel clothes as usual, and surrounded by a sea of luggage. Scarlett had sent for them after Rhett's accident, and they had apparently started for Atlanta as soon as the message reached them. How happy she was to have glad tidings.
Scarlett 's smile and the joy on her glowing face, running down the flight of stairs to meet them, told them more rapidly than words could have that he was better. They exhaled visibly, took her hands and kissed her, smiling with happiness.
"He just woke up. He is going to be alright". Scarlett would have been overjoyed to see them at any other time, when she was not so tired and so drained. Rosemary had become a close friend since the birth of Garreth and Butler family's frequent presence at the plantation had welded them into sisters. Relieved of her anxiety for her brother's life, Rosemary kept up a stream of inconsequential chatter Scarlett would have found diverting had she not been so tired. Miss Eleanore, formidable even in her seventies but growing frailer with each season, looked like she could use rest herself.
Scarlett had ordered rooms prepared, and after refreshments, brief talk about their journey and Rhett's improved condition she left them to settle in. Having seen to their needs, the exhaustion that she had felt earlier suddenly intensified to a degree that she was staring to lose command of her limbs. She finally crumpled down on the day bed in her private parlor, not wanting to disturb Rhett, and still sleep eluded her.
~~~~88~~~~~
Three months after he had first left he had arrived back at the house without warning, without giving her a chance to prepare either herself or the household, and his dead eyes had taken in her thinness, the pained drawn faces of Wade and Ella, as well as her own pitiful joy at his presence. She had spared herself no degradation in her delight, determined not to waste her chance to sweep him off his feet. She had simpered, fluttered and cooed like a rabid sparrow all throughout dinner. She had even gone into his bedroom at night, wearing what she thought was her most attractive, clinging nightgown, but he had slept or feigned sleep and she had retreated on the receding tide of her audacity, leaving the last shreds of her dignity behind. She couldn't think back to that time without feeling utterly humiliated.
The next day, he had offered to stay for good.
She had felt a premature flush of triumph, looking up into his eyes to search for the ardent flame of desire she felt sure she must have inspired, but encountered nothing but the blandness whose name she did not yet know but which even then poised itself to be her most reliable companion in the long years to come. She had not know it then, her mind full of victory bells, for surly it meant he loved her.
"Why did you change your mind?" She had asked, coyly, hoping to draw him out after all to declarations of love, hoping -
He had sighed.
"It doesn't matter although it should be painfully obvious to anyone. I would ask you if you have given this newfound desire of yours sufficient thought but I know that would be an unreasonable expectation given you rarely think about the consequences of your whims. However, I will stay if you require it of me. I pay my debts."
He had dragged his fingers through his dark hair and looked anything but happy. In fact, he looked as if he hadn't slept much that night. He has said other things as well, complex things, meaningless then to the child-woman she had been. She sometimes wished she had paid closer attention so she could analyze his words now with what she hoped was her growing maturity, especially since it was the last time he had spoken sharply to her or rather the last time there was any emotion in his voice at all. Like sarcasm and bitterness had downed out his love the blandness had seeped into every crevasse of their life together until it coated everything like molasses.
He had kept his word and stayed. She had initially been afraid he would change his mind again, that he would leave them at the first sign of trouble, but eventually that fear was replaced by a trust in the status quo that was grounded as little in true understanding as her fears. When the months turned into years they settled into a routine that would have contented a lesser woman. Only when Garreth was born had she briefly seen resurfaced in his eyes the old flight-instinct that her simple nature could not understand, especially when they had just made this glorious, perfect baby. In the end, he had not run except for some days to Dunmore landing after her confinement, and she was grateful when he returned. Perhaps he had really suspected the boy was not his child, although Rhett had never alluded to such unworthy suspicions and indeed gave no outward sign that he harbored them, auburn locks or no.
Not that she had given him any cause for doubt. Rhett had reinstated marital intimacy relatively early into their reconciliation, which at first had delighted her like a blushing bride but, as the nights marched on, confused her as well. Now that she was paying close attention to such things for the first time she discovered a rhythm to his desire that she quite correctly suspected had little to do with her at all, that she could have been any woman, at any place, at any time. His practiced hands gave her release although they never lingered on her body, but he would catch her wrists, firmly, if she tried to touch him in return. She eventually gave up trying.
He had initially insisted on preventatives he probably acquired through his connections to Atlanta's underworld but suddenly, about a year into their rapprochement, he stopped using them without any explanation and she almost immediately fell pregnant. She had hoped, briefly, hotly, that things would change when she told him she was with child, only to have that piece of information crash against his practiced blandness like a wave that had run out of force long before it reached the shore. He had listened to her earth-shattering announcement with perfect urbanity, and said -"I hope it will make you happy".
She hadn't understood then, or felt anything except crushing disappointment. Scarlett would be the first to admit that she hadn't understood much of anything about Rhett up to that point. As her pregnancy progressed she caught him watching her at times with a strange expression in his dark eyes, a close cousin to his old cat-before-the-mousehole look but disconcertingly different. He had insisted she rest, and himself overlooked her store in her absence, and she had complied out of fear for the baby. This forced inactivity gave her, perhaps for the first time in her adult life, long stretches of time to think, and to contemplate. As neither her mind nor her education were suited for novels or French philosophy she turned her hand to contemplation instead. With the ferocity of a girl obsessed by her first beaux, she contemplated Rhett.
And she had miraculously through those endless hot summer days arrived at a glimmer of understanding that he had given her this baby in part out of the kindness and pity he had professed and that she had detested, and perhaps even to turn the torrent of her life away from himself to a new focus. That he had not been fooled by her attempts to mimic his polished indifference, to fall into the steady comfortable rhythm of their marriage and appear to want no more. That her hopes, though vain and foolish and mostly silent, were still disturbing to his peace. That the blandness had demanded, and received, one final sacrifice to its shrine.