Then his arms went around her waist and shoulders and she felt the hard muscles of his
thighs against her body and the buttons of his coat pressing into her breast A warm tide of feeling, bewildering, frightening, swept over her, carrying out of her mind the time and place and circumstances. She felt as limp as a rag doll, warm, weak and helpless, and his supporting arms were so pleasant.
"You don't want to change your mind about what I said last month? There's nothing like danger and death to give an added fillip. Be patriotic, Scarlett Think how you would be sending a soldier to his death with beautiful memories."
He was kissing her now and his mustache tickled her mouth, kissing her with slow, hot
lips that were so leisurely as though he had the whole night before him. Charles had never kissed her like this. Never had the kisses of the Tarleton and Calvert boys made her go hot and cold and
shaky like this. He bent her body backward and his lips traveled down her throat to where the cameo fastened her basque.
"Sweet," he whispered. "Sweet."
She saw the wagon dimly in the dark and heard the treble piping of Wade's voice.
"Muvver! Wade fwightened!"
Into her swaying, darkened mind, cold sanity came back with a rush and she remembered
what she had forgotten for the moment--that she was frightened too, and Rhett was leaving her, leaving her, the damned cad. And on top of it all, he had the consummate gall to stand here in the road and insult her with his infamous proposals. Rage and hate flowed into her and stiffened her spine and with one wrench she tore herself loose from his arms.
"Oh, you cad!" she cried and her mind leaped about, trying to think of worse things to call him, things she had heard Gerald call Mr. Lincoln, the Macintoshes and balky mules, but the words would not come. "You lowdown, cowardly, nasty, stinking thing!" And because she could not think of anything crushing enough, she drew back her arm and slapped him across the mouth with all the force she had left. He took a step backward, his hand going to his face.
"Ah," he said quietly and for a moment they stood facing each other in the darkness.
Scarlett could hear his heavy breathing, and her own breath came in gasps as if she had been running hard.
"They were right! Everybody was right! You aren't a gentleman!"
"My dear girl," he said, "how inadequate."
She knew he was laughing and the thought goaded her.
"Go on! Go on now! I want you to hurry. I don't want to ever see you again. I hope a cannon ball lands right on you. I hope it blows you to a million pieces. I--"
"Never mind the rest. I follow your general idea. When I'm dead on the altar of my
country, I hope your conscience hurts you."
She heard him laugh as he turned away and walked back toward the wagon. She saw him
stand beside it, heard him speak and his voice was changed, courteous and respectful as it always was when he spoke to Melanie.
"Mrs. Wilkes?"
Prissy's frightened voice made answer from the wagon.
"Gawdlmighty. Cap'n Butler! Miss Melly done fainted away back yonder."
"She's not dead? Is she breathing?"
"Yassuh, she breathin'."
"Then she's probably better off as she is. If she were conscious, I doubt if she could live through all the pain. Take good care of her, Prissy. Here's a shinplaster for you. Try not to be a bigger fool than you are."
"Yassuh. Thankee suh."
"Good-by, Scarlett."
She knew he had turned and was facing her but she did not speak. Hate choked all
utterance. His feet ground on the pebbles of the road and for a moment she saw his big shoulders looming up in the dark. Then he was gone. She could hear the sound of his feet for a while and then they died away. She came slowly back to the wagon, her knees shaking.
Why had he gone, stepping off into the dark, into the war, into a Cause that was lost, into a world that was mad? Why had he gone, Rhett who loved the pleasures of women and liquor, the comfort of good food and soft beds, the feel of fine linen and good leather, who hated the South and jeered at the fools who fought for it? Now he had set his varnished boots upon a bitter road where hunger tramped with tireless stride and wounds and weariness and heartbreak ran like
yelping wolves. And the end of the road was death. He need not have gone. He was safe, rich, comfortable. But he had gone, leaving her alone in a night as black as blindness, with the Yankee Army between her and home.
Now she remembered all the bad names she had wanted to call him but it was too late.
She leaned her head against the bowed neck of the horse and cried.