He raised his head violently and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, fiercely throwing off her hands.
"No, by God, you don't understand!
You can't understand!
You're-- you're too good to understand.
You don't believe me but it's all true and I'm a dog.
Do you know why I did it?
I was mad, crazy with jealousy.
She never cared for me and I thought I could make her care.
But she never cared.
She doesn't love me.
She never has.
She loves--"
His passionate, drunken gaze met hers and he stopped, mouth open, as though for the first time he realized to whom he was speaking.
Her face was white and strained but her eyes were steady and sweet and full of pity and unbelief.
There was a luminous serenity in them and the innocence in the soft brown depths struck him like a blow in the face, clearing some of the alcohol out of his brain, halting his mad, careering words in mid-flight.
He trailed off into a mumble, his eyes dropping away from hers, his lids batting rapidly as he fought back to sanity.
"I'm a cad," he muttered, dropping his head tiredly back into her lap.
"But not that big a cad.
And if I did tell you, you wouldn't believe me, would you?
You're too good to believe me.
I never before knew anybody who was really good.
You wouldn't believe me, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't believe you," said Melanie soothingly, beginning to stroke his hair again.
"She's going to get well.
There, Captain Butler!
Don't cry!
She's going to get well."
CHAPTER LVII
It was a pale, thin woman that Rhett put on the Jonesboro train a month later.
Wade and Ella, who were to make the trip with her, were silent and uneasy at their mother's still, white face.
They clung close to Prissy, for even to their childish minds there was something frightening in the cold, impersonal atmosphere between their mother and their stepfather.
Weak as she was, Scarlett was going home to Tara.
She felt that she would stifle if she stayed in Atlanta another day, with her tired mind forcing itself round and round the deeply worn circle of futile thoughts about the mess she was in.
She was sick in body and weary in mind and she was standing like a lost child in a nightmare country in which there was no familiar landmark to guide her.
As she had once fled Atlanta before an invading army, so she was fleeing it again, pressing her worries into the back of her mind with her old defense against the world:
"I won't think of it now.
I can't stand it if I do.
I'll think of it tomorrow at Tara.
Tomorrow's another day."
It seemed that if she could only get back to the stillness and the green cotton fields of home, all her troubles would fall away and she would somehow be able to mold her shattered thoughts into something she could live by.
Rhett watched the train until it was out of sight and on his face there was a look of speculative bitterness that was not pleasant.
He sighed, dismissed the carriage and mounting his horse, rode down Ivy Street toward Melanie's house.
It was a warm morning and Melanie sat on the vine-shaded porch, her mending basket piled high with socks.
Confusion and dismay filled her when she saw Rhett alight from his horse and toss the reins over the arm of the cast-iron negro boy who stood at the sidewalk.
She had not seen him alone since that too dreadful day when Scarlett had been so ill and he had been so--well--so drunk.
Melanie hated even to think the word.
She had spoken to him only casually during Scarlett's convalescence and, on those occasions, she had found it difficult to meet his eyes.
However, he had been his usual bland self at those times, and never by look or word showed that such a scene had taken place between them.
Ashley had told her once that men frequently did not remember things said and done in drink and Melanie prayed heartily that Captain Butler's memory had failed him on that occasion.
She felt she would rather die than learn that he remembered his outpourings.