"Who's there?" cried a nasal voice and she stopped on the middle of the stairs, the blood thudding in her ears so loudly she could hardly hear him. "Halt or I'll shoot!" came the voice.
He stood in the door of the dining room, crouched tensely, his pistol in one hand and, in the other, the small rosewood sewing box fitted with gold thimble, gold-handled scissors and tiny gold-topped acorn of emery. Scarlett's legs felt cold to the knees but rage scorched her face.
Ellen's sewing box in his hands. She wanted to cry: "Put it down! Put it down, you dirty--"but words would not come. She could only stare over the banisters at him and watch his face change from harsh tenseness to a half-contemptuous, half-ingratiating smile.
"So there is somebody at home," he said, slipping his pistol back into its holster and moving into the hall until he stood directly below her. "All alone, little lady?"
Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded
face. Before he could even fumble at his belt, she pulled the trigger. The back kick of the pistol made her reel, as the roar of the explosion filled her ears and the acrid smoke stung her nostrils.
The man crashed backwards to the floor, sprawling into the dining room with a violence that shook the furniture. The box clattered from his hand, the contents spilling about him. Hardly aware that she was moving, Scarlett ran down the stairs and stood over him, gazing down into what was left of the face above the beard, a bloody pit where the nose had been, glazing eyes burned with powder. As she looked, two streams of blood crept across the shining floor, one from his face and one from the back of his head.
Yes, he was dead. Undoubtedly. She had killed a man.
The smoke curled slowly to the ceiling and the red streams widened about her feet. For a
timeless moment she stood there and in the still hot hush of the summer morning every irrelevant sound and scent seemed magnified, the quick thudding of her heart, like, a drumbeat, the slight rough rustling of the magnolia leaves, the far-off plaintive sound of a swamp bird and the sweet smell of the flowers outside the window.
She had killed a man, she who took care never to be in at the kill on a hunt, she who could not bear the squealing of a hog at slaughter or the squeak of a rabbit in a snare. Murder! she
thought dully. I've done murder. Oh, this can't be happening to me! Her eyes went to the stubby hairy hand on the floor so close to the sewing box and suddenly she was vitally alive again, vitally glad with a cool tigerish joy. She could have ground her heel into the gaping wound which had been his nose and taken sweet pleasure in the feel of his warm blood on her bare feet. She had struck a blow of revenge for Tara--and for Ellen.
There were hurried stumbling steps in the upper hall, a pause and then more steps, weak
dragging steps now, punctuated by metallic clankings. A sense of time and reality coming back to her, Scarlett looked up and saw Melanie at the top of the stairs, clad only in the ragged chemise which served her as a nightgown, her weak arm weighed down with Charles' saber. Melanie's eyes took in the scene below in its entirety, the sprawling blue-clad body in the red pool, the sewing box beside him, Scarlett, barefooted and gray-faced, clutching the long pistol.
In silence her eyes met Scarlett's. There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle
face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett's own bosom.
"Why--why--she's like me! She understands how I feel!" thought Scarlett in that long moment "She'd have done the same thing!"
With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl for whom she had never had any
feelings but of dislike and contempt. Now, straggling against hatred for Ashley's wife, there surged a feeling of admiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion that beneath the gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there was a thin flashing blade of unbreakable steel, felt too that there were banners and bugles of courage in Melanie's quiet blood.
"Scarlett! Scarlett!" shrilled the weak frightened voices of Suellen and Carreen, muffled by their closed door, and Wade's voice screamed "Auntee! Auntee!" Swiftly Melanie put her finger to her lips and, laying the sword on the top step, she painfully made her way down the upstairs hall and opened the door of the sick room.
"Don't be scared, chickens!" came her voice with teasing gaiety. "Your big sister was trying to clean the rust off Charles' pistol and it went off and nearly scared her to death!" …
"Now, Wade Hampton, Mama just shot off your dear Papa's pistol! When you are bigger, she will let you shoot it."