born but the merciful blurring of the childbirth pains obscured almost everything in mist. She did recall a few things and she spoke to Prissy rapidly, authority in her voice.
"Build a fire in the stove and keep hot water boiling in the kettle. And bring up all the towels you can find and that ball of twine. And get me the scissors. Don't come telling me you can't find them. Get them and get them quick. Now hurry."
She jerked Prissy to her feet and sent her kitchenwards with a shove. Then she squared
her shoulders and started up the stairs. It was going to be difficult, telling Melanie that she and Prissy were to deliver her baby.
CHAPTER XXII
THERE WOULD NEVER AGAIN BE an afternoon as long as this one. Or as hot. Or as full of
lazy insolent flies. They swarmed on Melanie despite the fan Scarlett kept in constant motion.
Her arms ached from swinging the wide palmetto leaf. All her efforts seemed futile, for while she brushed them from Melanie's moist face, they crawled on her clammy feet and legs and made her jerk them weakly and cry: "Please! On my feet!"
The room was in semigloom, for Scarlett had pulled down the shades to shut out the heat
and brightness. Pin points of sunlight came in through minute holes in the shades and about the edges. The room was an oven and Scarlett's sweat-drenched clothes never dried but became
wetter and stickier as the hours went by. Prissy was crouched in a corner, sweating too, and smelled so abominably Scarlett would have sent her from the room had she not feared the girl would take to her heels if once out of sight Melanie lay on the bed on a sheet dark with
perspiration and splotched with dampness where Scarlett had spilled water. She twisted
endlessly, to one side, to the other, to left, to right and back again.
Sometimes she tried to sit up and fell back and began twisting again. At first, she had tried to keep from crying out, biting her lips until they were raw, and Scarlett, whose nerves were as raw as the lips, said huskily: "Melly, for God's sake, don't try to be brave. Yell if you want to.
There's nobody to hear you but us."
As the afternoon wore on, Melanie moaned whether she wanted to be brave or not, and
sometimes she screamed. When she did, Scarlett dropped her head into her hands and covered her ears and twisted her body and wished that she herself were dead. Anything was preferable to being a helpless witness to such pain. Anything was better than being tied here waiting for a baby that took such a long time coming. Waiting, when for all she knew the Yankees were actually at Five Points.
She fervently wished she had paid more attention to the whispered conversations of
matrons on the subject of childbirth. If only she had! If only she had been more interested in such matters she'd know whether Melanie was taking a long time or not. She had a vague memory of
one of Aunt Pitty's stories of a friend who was in labor for two days and died without ever having the baby. Suppose Melanie should go on like this for two days! But Melanie was so delicate. She couldn't stand two days of this pain. She'd die soon if the baby didn't hurry. And how could she ever face Ashley, if he were still alive, and tell him that Melanie had died--after she had promised to take care of her?
At first, Melanie wanted to hold Scarlett's hand when the pain was bad but she clamped
down on it so hard she nearly broke the bones. After an hour of this, Scarlett's hands were so swollen and bruised she could hardly flex them. She knotted two long towels together and tied them to the foot of the bed and put the knotted end in Melanie's hands. Melanie hung onto it as though it were a life line, straining, pulling it taut, slackening it, tearing it. Throughout the afternoon, her voice went on like an animal dying in a trap. Occasionally she dropped the towel and rubbed her hands feebly and looked up at Scarlett with eyes enormous with pain.
"Talk to me. Please talk to me," she whispered and Scarlett would gabble something until Melanie again gripped the knot and again began writhing.
The dim room swam with heat and pain and droning flies, and time went by on such
dragging feet Scarlett could scarcely remember the morning. She felt as if she had been in this steaming, dark, sweating place all her life. She wanted very much to scream every time Melanie did, and only by biting her lips so hard it infuriated her could she restrain herself and drive off hysteria.
Once Wade came tiptoeing up the stairs and stood outside the door, wailing.
"Wade hungwy!" Scarlett started to go to him, but Melanie whispered: "Don't leave me.
Please. I can stand it when you're here."
So Scarlett sent Prissy down to warm up the breakfast hominy and feed him. For herself,