Scarlett thought despairingly that Melanie would know what he meant. Melly and he were
always talking such foolishness, poetry and books and dreams and moonrays and star dust. He was not fearing the things she feared, not the gnawing of an empty stomach, nor the keenness of the winter wind nor eviction from Tara. He was shrinking before some fear she had never known and could not imagine. For, in God's name, what was there to fear in this wreck of a world but hunger and cold and the loss of home?
And she had thought that if she listened closely she would know the answer to Ashley.
"Oh!" she said and the disappointment in her voice was that of a child who opens a beautifully wrapped package to find it empty. At her tone, he smiled ruefully as though
apologizing.
"Forgive me, Scarlett, for talking so. I can't make you understand because you don't know the meaning of fear. You have the heart of a lion and an utter lack of imagination and I envy you both of those qualities. You'll never mind facing realities and you'll never want to escape from them as I do."
"Escape!"
It was as if that were the only understandable word he had spoken. Ashley, like her, was
tired of the struggle and he wanted to escape. Her breath came fast.
"Oh, Ashley," she cried, "you're wrong. I do want to escape, too. I am so very tired of it all!"
His eyebrows went up in disbelief and she laid a hand, feverish and urgent, on his arm.
"Listen to me," she began swiftly, the words tumbling out one over the other. "I'm tired of it all, I tell you. Bone tired and I'm not going to stand it any longer. I've struggled for food and for money and I've weeded and hoed and picked cotton and I've even plowed until I can't stand it another minute. I tell you, Ashley, the South is dead! It's dead! The Yankees and the free niggers and the Carpetbaggers have got it and there's nothing left for us. Ashley, let's run away!"
He peered at her sharply, lowering his head to look into her face, now flaming with color.
"Yes, let's run away--leave them all! I'm tired of working for the folks. Somebody will take care of them. There's always somebody who takes care of people who can't take care of themselves. Oh, Ashley, let's run away, you and I. We could go to Mexico--they want officers in the Mexican Army and we could be so happy there. I'd work for you, Ashley. I'd do anything for you. You know you don't love Melanie--"
He started to speak, a stricken look on his face, but she stemmed his words with a torrent of her own.
"You told me you loved me better than her that day--oh, you remember that day! And I know you haven't changed! I can tell you haven't changed! And you've just said she was nothing but a dream--Oh, Ashley, let's go away! I could make you so happy. And anyway," she added venomously, "Melanie can't--Dr. Fontaine said she couldn't ever have any more children and I could give you--"
His hands were on her shoulders so tightly that they hurt and she stopped, breathless.
"We were to forget that day at Twelve Oaks."
"Do you think I could ever forget it? Have you forgotten it? Can you honestly say you don't love me?"
He drew a deep breath and answered quickly.
"No. I don't love you."
"That's a lie."
"Even if it is a lie," said Ashley and his voice was deadly quiet, "it is not something which can be discussed."
"You mean--"
"Do you think I could go off and leave Melanie and the baby, even if I hated them both?
Break Melanie's heart? Leave them both to the charity of friends? Scarlett, are you mad? Isn't there any sense of loyalty in you? You couldn't leave your father and the girls. They're your responsibility, just as Melanie and Beau are mine, and whether you are tired or not, they are here and you've got to bear them."
"I could leave them--I'm sick of them--tired of them--"
He leaned toward her and, for a moment, she thought with a catch at her heart that he was going to take her in his arms. But instead, he patted her arm and spoke as one comforting a child.
"I know you're sick and tired. That's why you are talking this way. You've carried the load of three men. But I'm going to help you--I won't always be so awkward--"
"There's only one way you can help me," she said dully, "and that's to take me away from here and give us a new start somewhere, with a chance for happiness. There's nothing to keep us here."
"Nothing," he said quietly, "nothing--except honor."
She looked at him with baffled longing and saw, as if for the first time, how the crescents of his lashes were the thick rich gold of ripe wheat, how proudly his head sat upon his bared neck and how the look of race and dignity persisted in his slim erect body, even through its grotesque rags. Her eyes met his, hers naked with pleading, his remote as mountain lakes under gray skies.