The mist swirled closer and closer, tendrils of it snaking into his nose, his mouth, creeping down his throat and choking him. "Help me!" Rhett cried. "Help me! Help me!"

He woke, gasping for air, in the chair by the dying fire. The clock was just chiming the hour—one in the morning.

A dream then—thank God, a dream! The book—A Christmas Carol—had tumbled from his lap, and fallen to the floor, pages come loose from the bindings, scattered about his feet like leaves. But when Rhett leaned down to retrieve them, he felt the cuffs of his trousers wet, as though he had been walking outside, in the dew. What explanation could he have for it?

And there were two glasses of whisky on his table, by the decanter. How to explain that? Feeling the blood leech from his face, he grabbed one, drained it, and then the other, slamming it down on the tabletop as the ghost of Gerald O'Hara had done.

He stood, and paced before the hearth a moment. It had seemed so real—but it could not be. His mind clicked and whirred, trying to make sense of it. It was the book. Of course it was! His dream had taken the form of the story he had been reading when he had fallen asleep. Such things could happen. And he had heard stories of men sleep-walking—he had been in the army with such a fellow. Waking up in the night and walking round as though he was awake—they had had to watch him, take his gun from him at night, lest he, in his weird state, turn it on his comrades.

But had he, Rhett Butler, ever done such a thing? Not to his knowledge. He would have to ask Belle—he had spent nights with her often enough. He chuckled mirthlessly, and reached into his pocket for the cigar he had put there hours ago.

It was gone. He remembered lighting it, waiting for Gerald to speak by the stone wall.

He was losing his mind. That was the only conclusion he could draw. It happened to people sometimes, when they had had a great loss. He had lost so much, so fast: Bonnie, and the other children, too, for Wade and Ella were lost to him, now. The child Scarlett had been carrying. Dead—and by his hand? Miss Melanie—dead. His home. Scarlett herself.

And any chance at happiness.

He buried his face in his hand and with the other poured the rest of the whisky unsteadily into his glass. Drained it, and moved to the bed, sprawled across it. He was drunk now, he thought, at least he had had enough to drink to get him through this terrible night. Would it never end? Never?

He slept fitfully, tormented not exactly by dreams but by weird snippets of memory, Christmasses long ago come back around for him again. He was a child, of five or six, and the flickering candles on the table danced crazily before his eyes. Another Christmas, long ago. His father was picking at his goose, displeased by it—but then, Rhett's father had never been pleased by anything. Rhett had gotten a puppy for Christmas that year, a small hound, his first bird dog. His father had kicked it, and made it squeal. He had drowned it, because it was not housebroken. Shortly after the new year—Rhett remembered fighting his father as he told Avery, the grizzled black man, to take away the squirming burlap bag and throw it in the river. Scratching, biting. He had been whipped but it had been nothing compared to the small dog's terrified cries as it was taken out. His mother had come to him, later, with a towel of ice to put on his blistered back, talking soothingly to him. Father was upset at something. Father was not himself. And when Rhett refused to see that, the most important thing: Father is the master of this house. Rhett had decided then that one day he would be master, himself, and there would be nobody who would dare tell him what to do. When they had asked him the next year what he wanted for Christmas, he had said nothing, and meant it. There was nothing he wanted—nothing he had wanted since then but freedom, and ability to have what he wanted.

His mother—he saw her before him. She had tried so hard. Every year, red bows around the banisters, spruce garlands on the mantelpiece. Snow white camellias in silver bowls, on shining mahogany tables. Father had spent Christmas with his woman, the whore he kept in town, and come home, and Mother had dared to chide him—gently, so gently—for not being home for dinner. He had taken the silver bowl and thrown it at her, catching her in the face, so that her lip split, and blood ran down her chin into the lace at her throat. She had dressed so carefully that night. And she tried to smile—it made her lip bleed more.

Rhett had flown at his father. He was bigger than the man, by then—at fifteen he stood six feet tall. He was strong, and well-muscled, because he saw to it that he was. He struck his father, he beat him, as he had seen his father beat his mother. Only a few blows, but they were enough to send Robert Butler reeling.

In January they had shipped him to West Point. That terrible year was the last Christmas he spent at home. The next year they did not send for him, and he wandered the halls of the deserted academy like a ghost. By the year after, he had been expelled, and he spent the last days of the waning year in New Orleans, with the girl-whore Belle Watling, still Isabelle Xavier then.* They had had a week-long debauch, hardly noticing when one day melted into the other.

He remembered Christmas of '64, which he spent with the army. A haze of stars, half-obscured by gunsmoke, and a bitter cold. Someone had been coughing blood, someone else reciting in a low voice the words of the holy book: "Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men on which his favors rest." It had been easy to believe there was peace on earth on a night as still as that—but no! There was the distant sound of cannon as the wind turned.

Bonnie. Bonnie. She danced before him, slightly out of reach. Under the mistletoe—"gimme a kiss, Daddy"—with a crown of tinsel on her burnished black hair. Asking him, in her little lisping voice, "Is Santa Claus as handsome as you? And will you shoot him if I say he is?" Scarlett, in a rare show of affection, sitting on his knee while Bonnie sat on the other, saying, "Why, Santa Claus can't hold a handle to your pa, Bonnie Blue Butler." Scarlett, giving him a kiss so quick and fleeting that it might have been a snowflake, melting as soon as it touched his skin. But touching the pretty diamond brooch he had given her, pinned to the throat of her dress, and the happy look in her eyes was like a kiss. Sitting on the davenport in the parlor, as the candle-lights on the Christmastree flickered in the dim, all of them, the whole family, Rhett with his arm around Scarlett, and Wade and Ella like bookends on either side of them, Bonnie sandwiched in between, laughing uproariously at something her mother had said.

Oh, Bonnie. We might have made it if you had lived.

He woke again, with a foul taste in his mouth, his head stuffed with cotton wool, and his face hot to the touch. Half-way between sleep and wake he moaned,

"Water—water"—like a dying man.

There was a cool touch on his brow, and a cup held to his lips. He drank, feeling like a small boy.

"There! There, Captain Butler," said a voice—a sweet voice. "You're going to be well. There! Hush, now."

Rhett looked up with disbelieving eyes at the gentle face that loomed over him.

"Well, Miss Melly," he breathed—hardly daring to breathe, lest she disappear. "It's been a long time."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Melanie Wilkes smoothed her brown hair and sat back in her chair by the bed. She looked the same—as good and gentle as ever, with that same spark of sympathy, of understanding, in her eyes. Yes—she was as demure and placid as she had ever been in life, in death, but there was something about her that was not as girlish as it had been. This Melanie Wilkes—this ghost Melanie Wilkes—was not a shrinking violet. There was a new air of confidence to her, of womanliness.

"Why, Miss Melly," breathed Rhett. "You've grown up at last."

Her giggle, at least, was no less girlish than it had been. "I suppose I had to," she said, a little regretfully. "Death will do that to a person."

"You seem—you seem—different, somehow."

"Yes—I know a lot of things, now, Captain Butler. Death does that, too. It lifts aside the curtain and shows you the truth of the matter—all matters. Captain Butler, you're a learned man—but I know more, now, than you can ever dream of."

"You always did," said Rhett, thinking of the way that Melanie had always treated Scarlett. She had had the knack of turning the other cheek, of looking past the bad to see the good.

It was easier to humor the ghost of Melanie than it had been the ghost of Gerald. And easier to believe in her, too. But why shouldn't he? Could he believe goodness like that could die? And didn't he feel Melanie's presence in his life, sometimes, even now? "I suppose you'll want to know all about Ashley and Beau? How they're doing?"

"I know," said Melanie simply. "I visit them often. And you Captain Butler."

"And I suppose you think I'm bungling my life quite badly?"

"Well, I'm not pleased with what's happened with you and Scarlett," Melanie admitted, twisting her small white hands in her lap. "But I—oh, I understand. But I do think—I do think you should forgive her."

"And," sighed Rhett, wearily, "I suppose you're going to drag me off into the mists and show me why you think I should. Like Gerald O'Hara did."

She dimpled at the mention of his name. "I won't drag you," said Melanie Wilkes graciously, "But if you would like to come—I would be so happy."

"And if I don't want to come?"

"Oh! Then—I'll just have to sit here, and haunt you, until you do, I suppose."

Rhett climbed from bed and extended his hand, grinning at her new forcefulness. "Let's go, then," he said agreeably.

The spectre of Melanie Wilkes had turned bright crimson and turned her back.

"Wouldn't you—like to—put on some proper clothes?" she asked a little weakly, and Rhett smiled wider. There were some aspects of the human spirit that even death could not erase. It appeared that Melanie Wilkes would never, even in all eternity, be entirely comfortable with the sight of a strange man in a dressing gown. Rhett shrugged it off, and donned a shirt and coat, and traded his shoes for his slippers.

"You can turn around," he told her. "I'm decent, now."

And then Melanie did another surprising thing: she made a joke.

"Decent," she said, "Would never have been the word I chose to describe you."

She grinned, and reached out and touched his fingers. The ground fell away beneath their feet.

*You will have to read my story, Tomorrow, to know what this means.