Vignette 11
"You pierce my soul. I am half agony. Half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever." -Jane Austen, Persuasion
A few days after the incident, she sat mindlessly on the porch, saw him walk callously up the walkway, and he sat down, beside her of all places, without permission. Before she could reprimand him for making matters worse, he said it as if it was a mere matter of the weather:
"Run away with me Scarlett."
Her green eyes flashed, as they did many years ago when a similar proposition left his lips. Another one of his games? It was a joke then (wasn't it?) and she had brushed it off, in the same manner, she brushed off all his other incomprehensible utterances, dismissing the enigmatic man as a puzzle she would never solve. What he felt, she had no idea, for his face was tilted downwards as he lit a cigar, the brim of his hat working with the wispy smoke to hide the conflict in his eyes. Look at me, she thought, but he did not, and she was sure his avoidance was deliberate as she continued to stare, bewildered, at the side of his head.
"What?" she said stupidly, and only then had the mind to look around, making sure no one had heard the scandal in his words. The servants were nosy—Mammy could be behind the front door for all she knew—and Frank was a mere flight of stairs away from where they sat on the weathered porch. She flinched as she heard Ella's cries and sank down further in her chair, her hand unconsciously clutched to her belly. An action that had not gone unnoticed.
"You must be joking."
Under the haze, his frown was well hidden, his hopeful eyes deadened, and his arm was stricken with tension.
"Frankly, this whole ordeal is a joke, wouldn't you agree?"
"Stop speaking in riddles, Rhett."
"I speak plainly, but you never did see what's in front of you. I suppose that is the cruelest thing about you. But never mind that it seems we are at cross-purposes, my dear."
He was always so detached, so cool-headed with his insults.
"If we are, it's all your fault. You started this little game—it never should have begun in the first place."
He turned to her then, his face taking on a practiced blandness, and darkly replied, "Do you regret it?"
Without thinking, unaware that he was of the same mind, that they were of the same cloth, she retaliated with the sheer instinct of hurting him, to provoke something, anything but this indifference.
"I do."
"Then I shan't disrupt you any longer."
He rose, waiting for a quiet whisper of his name, a soft interjection—one which never came.
Several hours after he left was when she realized he had meant it. Even worse, alone in her cold, lonely bed, she made the frightening realization that she wanted it to be sincere. That she wanted to say yes had their pride not blinded them both. But the weeks of pretense, of unsaid confessions, of ill-defined circumstances, how was she to know?
Unknowingly, in all their time together, even in tender, warm moments she had come to associate with him, she thought she had learned everything of Rhett—everything except what he truly was.