Rhett watched as his daughter picked up her hairbrush again, and began running it through her black curls. In a low voice she sang a song Rhett did not know, the song she had been singing when he had first come into the room to see her. A strange, haunting tune—how could she know it?
Full many a bird did wake and fly
Curoo, curoo, curoo
Full many a bird did wake and fly
To the manger bed with a wandering cry
On Christmas day in the morning
Curoo, curoo, curoo.
He felt that she was slipping from him, and he did not want her to go. Her mirror was blank now, and he saw his own face as he leaned forward to take her head in his hands, and turn it back to him.
"Bonnie," he said. "Bonnie, you never answered me. Bonnie…these things you've shown me…they won't necessarily happen, will they? If—if something was to change—it would never come to pass. Bonnie, am I right? Am I, darling?"
"There are many times in our lives when we may choose the right thing," she said cryptically. "But ah! How many times we don't!"
"But surely—surely you're painting things a little strongly? I can't be the linchpin that holds so many people from the brink. It can't all be because of me. And no one can blame me for not wanting anything to do with Scarlett anymore. She treated me abominably—everyone knows she did. No one could blame me for wanting to be happy?"
"It's not happiness you're looking for," said Bonnie. "It's something darker. And it will give you nothing but sorrow, the longer you pursue it."
Rhett looked back to the mirror, certain that its depths would begin to swirl again. But as he watched, the mirror dissipated, and the pretty furnishings of Bonnie's room faded away. They were no longer in a young girl's bedchamber—they were in a strange room he did not recognize, full of people. It was Christmas, some other Christmas-yet-to-come, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for it. Here and there Rhett recognized faces of people he knew: Mrs. Merriweather, gray-haired and wizened; the Meades, much as he remembered them; Rene and Maybelle Picard; Tommy Wellburn. The mood was subdued, and people were talking, and across the room, Aunt Pitty Hamilton was weeping copiously into a handkerchief. He was not alarmed by her tears. Pittypat Hamilton was always weeping over something.
"I can't believe he's gone," she was saying, through her tears. "Scarlett," she called out, across the throng, "Scarlett Wilkes! Oh! I bet you wish you'd been nicer to him now. Poor fellow—poor fellow."
"Who died?" Rhett asked Bonnie, with him on the fringes of the crowd. He felt a prickle of unease at not knowing. "Bonnie—who died? Is it Beau? Is it little Beau Wilkes?" But nobody could ever have accused Scarlett of not caring for Beau.
Bonnie said nothing, but propped her head in her hands, watching the scene with a soft, sad smile.
Scarlett, in her black dress, looked stricken but did not reply. Dr. Meade, though, turned to Pittypat and said, quite sharply,
"That's enough, Pitty. Lord knows I haven't too many good things to say about Scarlett, but you can hardly say it's her fault. It was a suicide, after all."
"Oh, God," Rhett groaned. "Is it Ashley? The insurance money he spoke of—suicide—oh, Bonnie, I don't like the man, but I didn't want him to die. And to die, that way, by his own hand!"
"I don't blame him for doing it," said Mrs. Meade, stepping forward to join her husband. "He should have done it years ago. And it doesn't surprise me a bit that he did it, at last. When you go through your life in the way he did—well. It's not much of a life, to me."
"Some people are born with no future," remarked Rene Picard to Tommy Wellburn. "They just muddle along in the here and now until it's time to go. He'd been drinking when he did it, everybody says—but I think he knew he'd finally reached the end of his rope."
Rhett sat back on his heels, in shock. Had life finally gotten the better of Ashley Wilkes? Ashley muddling along—yes—but Ashley, drunk? Drunk enough—to do that?
"His last thought was for the money," Rhett heard someone say, with a nasty snicker. "Well—I bet he found he couldn't take it with him, in the end!"
"We're well rid of him," Tommy Wellburn agreed. "When I think of how we took him into our fold, once, and how he betrayed us—good riddance is what I say."
Rhett was aghast. Could Ashley have fallen—fallen so far? Had he become like Scarlett, in the end? Turned to money, betrayed his friends? Had she corrupted him, finally—after years of trying, and made his noble spirit into something baser—like her own? Rhett found Scarlett with his eyes, and his heart pounded to see how lost and hopeless she looked, in her black taffeta. She must have loved Ashley very much—more than she had ever thought she might love Rhett, himself.
"Oh, stop!" she cried to the crowd, and Rhett saw her eyes were pink from weeping. "All of you—a man is dead, and you stand around speaking so ill of him, when he can't do anything about it. A man I loved! How can you do it? And it's Christmas—Christmas! Oh, it's too nasty—and I loved him."
"A little late to find that out," someone muttered. Rhett cocked his head. Late? When everyone knew Scarlett had loved Ashley Wilkes her whole life?
But Scarlett stood firm. "Yes—I was a fool for many years." Rhett's heart squeezed again. Did she mean that she had been a fool when she had married him? The way things had turned out, he didn't blame her. But still—it hurt him. Yes, it did! And it hurt him that she loved Wilkes, still, when he was dead. Scarlett pressed a hand to her mouth and then faced the crowd again. She was a tired woman, grieving, beaten down, but she was brave, too. Rhett saw that now, and he realized: Scarlett had always been brave.
"You only saw his failures," she said. "You all only cared about his shortcomings. But he was good—he was good to my children—and he wanted to be good to me, sometimes, but I kept him away. He was a hero in the war—everybody says he was. And when I think how he drove me and Melly all the way to Tara, the night Atlanta burned…"
With a jolt, Rhett came fully into himself. The night that—the night Atlanta burned? But Ashley Wilkes had not driven Scarlett and Melanie from the city. Rhett had driven them.
"Bonnie!" he cried, turning to his daughter. "Bonnie—it's not Ashley who died—Bonnie? Bonnie! Where are you?"
The girl had disappeared. "Bonnie!" Rhett shouted. "Bonnie, come back!"
But she did not come back, and the scene around him vanished, person by person evaporating into a white mist that swirled and swirled. Scarlett's face was the last to go, and in a panic, Rhett reached for her. Her green eyes were right there, before him, and then Rhett was stumbling, stumbling through the darkness, but she was gone.