Did you think he was really drunk?"
India snapped down the last shade and started on flying feet for the bedroom, with Scarlett close behind her, her heart in her throat.
Rhett's big body barred the doorway but, past his shoulder, Scarlett saw Ashley lying white and still on the bed.
Melanie, strangely quick for one so recently in a faint, was rapidly cutting off his blood-soaked shirt with embroidery scissors.
Archie held the lamp low over the bed to give light and one of his gnarled fingers was on Ashley's wrist.
"Is he dead?" cried both girls together.
"No, just fainted from loss of blood.
It's through his shoulder," said Rhett.
"Why did you bring him here, you fool?" cried India.
"Let me get to him!
Let me pass!
Why did you bring him here to be arrested?"
"He was too weak to travel.
There was nowhere else to bring him, Miss Wilkes.
Besides--do you want him to be an exile like Tony Fontaine?
Do you want a dozen of your neighbors to live in Texas under assumed names for the rest of their lives?
There's a chance that we may get them all off if Belle--"
"Let me pass!"
"No, Miss Wilkes. There's work for you.
You must go for a doctor-- Not Dr. Meade.
He's implicated in this and is probably explaining to the Yankees at this very minute.
Get some other doctor.
Are you afraid to go out alone at night?"
"No," said India, her pale eyes glittering.
"I'm not afraid."
She caught up Melanie's hooded cape which was hanging on a hook in the hall.
"I'll go for old Dr. Dean."
The excitement went out of her voice as, with an effort, she forced calmness. "I'm sorry I called you a spy and a fool.
I did not understand.
I'm deeply grateful for what you've done for Ashley--but I despise you just the same."
"I appreciate frankness--and I thank you for it."
Rhett bowed and his lip curled down in an amused smile.
"Now, go quickly and by back ways and when you return do not come in this house if you see signs of soldiers about."
India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley, and, wrapping her cape about her, ran lightly down the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly into the night.
Scarlett, straining her eyes past Rhett, felt her heart beat again as she saw Ashley's eyes open.
Melanie snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he smiled up weakly, reassuringly into her face.
Scarlett felt Rhett's hard penetrating eyes upon her, knew that her heart was plain upon her face, but she did not care.
Ashley was bleeding, perhaps dying and she who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder.
She wanted to run to the bed, sink down beside it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that she could not enter the room.
Hand at her mouth, she stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his shoulder, pressing it hard as though she could force back the blood into his body.
But the towel reddened as though by magic.
How could a man bleed so much and still live?
But, thank God, there was no bubble of blood at his lips--oh, those frothy red bubbles, forerunners of death that she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on Aunt Pitty's lawn with bloody mouths.
"Brace up," said Rhett, and there was a hard, faintly jeering note in his voice.
"He won't die.
Now, go take the lamp and hold it for Mrs. Wilkes.
I need Archie to run errands."
Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett.
"I ain't takin' no orders from you," he said briefly, shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek.
"You do what he says," said Melanie sternly, "and do it quickly.