Now she could stay in Atlanta. Now she could do almost as she pleased, Pittypat being the weak vessel that she was.
She unlocked the cellaret and stood for a moment with the bottle and glass pressed to her bosom.
She saw a long vista of picnics by the bubbling waters of Peachtree Creek and barbecues at Stone Mountain, receptions and balls, afternoon danceables, buggy rides and Sunday-night buffet suppers.
She would be there, right in the heart of things, right in the center of a crowd of men.
And men fell in love so easily, after you did little things for them at the hospital.
She wouldn’t mind the hospital so much now.
Men were so easily stirred when they had been ill.
They fell into a clever girl’s hand just like the ripe peaches at Tara when the trees were gently shaken.
She went back toward her father with the reviving liquor, thanking Heaven that the famous O’Hara head had not been able to survive last night’s bout and wondering suddenly if Rhett Butler had had anything to do with that.
CHAPTER XI
On an afternoon of the following week, Scarlett came home from the hospital weary and indignant.
She was tired from standing on her feet all morning and irritable because Mrs. Merriwether had scolded her sharply for sitting on a soldier’s bed while she dressed his wounded arm.
Aunt Pitty and Melanie, bonneted in their best, were on the porch with Wade and Prissy, ready for their weekly round of calls.
Scarlett asked to be excused from accompanying them and went upstairs to her room.
When the last sound of carriage wheels had died away and she knew the family was safely out of sight, she slipped quietly into Melanie’s room and turned the key in the lock.
It was a prim, virginal little room and it lay still and warm in the slanting rays of the four-o’clock sun.
The floors were glistening and bare except for a few bright rag rugs, and the white walls unornamented save for one corner which Melanie had fitted up as a shrine.
Here, under a draped Confederate flag, hung the gold-hilted saber that Melanie’s father had carried in the Mexican War, the same saber Charles had worn away to war.
Charles’ sash and pistol belt hung there too, with his revolver in the holster.
Between the saber and the pistol was a daguerreotype of Charles himself, very stiff and proud in his gray uniform, his great brown eyes shining out of the frame and a shy smile on his lips.
Scarlett did not even glance at the picture but went unhesitatingly across the room to the square rosewood writing box that stood on the table beside the narrow bed.
From it she took a pack of letters tied together with a blue ribbon, addressed in Ashley’s hand to Melanie.
On the top was the letter which had come that morning and this one she opened.
When Scarlett first began secretly reading these letters, she had been so stricken of conscience and so fearful of discovery she could hardly open the envelopes for trembling.
Now, her nevertoo-scrupulous sense of honor was dulled by repetition of the offense and even fear of discovery had subsided.
Occasionally, she thought with a sinking heart,
“What would Mother say if she knew?”
She knew Ellen would rather see her dead than know her guilty of such dishonor.
This had worried Scarlett at first, for she still wanted to be like her mother in every respect.
But the temptation to read the letters was too great and she put the thought of Ellen out of her mind.
She had become adept at putting unpleasant thoughts out of her mind these days.
She had learned to say,
“I won’t think of this or that bothersome thought now.
I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
Generally when tomorrow came, the thought either did not occur at all or it was so attenuated by the delay it was not very troublesome.
So the matter of Ashley’s letters did not lie very heavily on her conscience.
Melanie was always generous with the letters, reading parts of them aloud to Aunt Pitty and Scarlett.
But it was the part she did not read that tormented Scarlett, that drove her to surreptitious reading of her sister-in-law’s mail.
She had to know if Ashley had come to love his wife since marrying her.
She had to know if he even pretended to love her.
Did he address tender endearments to her?
What sentiments did he express and with what warmth?
She carefully smoothed out the letter.
Ashley’s small even writing leaped up at her as she read,
“My dear wife,” and she breathed in relief.
He wasn’t calling Melanie
“Darling” or “Sweetheart” yet.
“My Dear wife: You write me saying you are alarmed lest I be concealing my real thoughts from you and you ask me what is occupying my mind these days—”
“Mother of God!” thought Scarlett, in a panic of guilt. “'Concealing his real thoughts.’
Can Melly have read his mind?