ON AN AFTERNOON of the following week, Scarlett came home from the hospital weary andindignant. She tired from standing on her feet all morning and irritable because Mrs. Merriwetherhadsco(was) lded her sharply for sitting on a soldier’s bed while she dressed his woundedarm. Aunt Pitty and Melanie, bonneted in their best were on the porch with Wade and Prissy, readyfor their weekly round of calls. Scarlett asked to be excused from accompanying them and wentupstairs to her room.
When the last sound of carriage wheels had died away and she knew the family was safely outof sight she slipped quietly into Melanie’s room and turned the key in the lock. It was a prim,virginal little room and it lay still and warm in the slanting rays of the four-o’clock sun. The floorswere glistening and bare except for a few bright rag rugs, and the white walls unornamented savefor one corner which Melanie had fitted up as a shrine.
Here, under a draped Confederate flag, hung the gold-hilted saber that Melanie’s father hadcarried in the Mexican War, the same saber Charles had worn away to war. Charles’ sash and pistolbelt hung there too, with his revolver in the holster. Between the saber and the pistol was adaguerreotype of Charles himself, very stiff and proud in his gray uniform, his great brown eyesshining out of the frame and a shy smile on his lips.
Scarlett did not even glance at the picture but went unhesitatingly across the room to the squarerosewood writing box that stood on the table beside the narrow bed. From it she took a pack ofletters tied together with a blue ribbon, addressed in Ashley’s hand to Melanie. On the top was theletter which had come that morning and this one she opened.
When Scarlett first began secretly reading these letters, she had been so stricken of conscienceand so fearful of discovery she could hardly open the envelopes for trembling. Now, her never-tooscrupuloussense of honor was dulled by repetition of the offense and even fear of discovery hadsubsided. Occasionally, she thought with a sulking heart, “What would Mother say if she knew?”
She knew Ellen would rather see her dead than know her guilty of such dishonor. This had worriedScarlett at first, for she still wanted to be like her mother in every respect. But the temptation to read the letters was too great and she put the thought of Ellen out of her mind. She had becomeadept at putting unpleasant thoughts out of her mind these days. She had learned to say, “I won’tthink of this or that bothersome thought now. I’ll think about it tomorrow. Generally whentomorrow came, the thought either did not occur at all or it was so attenuated by the delay it wasnot very troublesome. So the matter of Ashley’s letters did not lie very heavily on her conscience.
Melanie was always generous with the letters, reading parts of them aloud to Aunt Pitty andScarlett. But it was the part she did not read that tormented Scarlett, that drove her to surreptitiousreading of her sister-in-law’s mail. She had to know if Ashley had come to love his wife sincemarrying her. She had to know if he even pretended to love her. Did he address tender endearmentsto her? What sentiments did he express and with what warmth?
She carefully smoothed out the letter.
Ashley’s small even writing leaped up at her as she read, “My dear wife,” and she breathed inrelief. He wasn’t calling Melanie “Darling” or “Sweetheart” yet.
“My Dear wife: You write me saying you are alarmed lest I be concealing my real thoughts fromyou and you ask me what is occupying my mind these days—”
“Mother of God!” thought Scarlett, in a panic of guilt “ ‘Concealing his real thoughts.’ CanMelly have read his mind? Or my mind? Does she suspect that he and I—”
Her hands trembled with fright as she held the letter closer, but as she read the next paragraphshe relaxed.
“Dear Wife, if I have concealed aught from you it is because I did not wish to lay a burden onyour shoulders, to add to your worries for my physical safety with those of my mental turmoil. ButI can keep nothing from you, for you know me too well. Do not be alarmed. I have no wound. Ihave not been ill. I have enough to eat and occasionally a bed to sleep in. A soldier can ask for nomore. But, Melanie, heavy thoughts lie on my heart and I will open my heart to you.
“These summer nights I lie awake, long after the camp is sleeping, and I look up at the stars and,over and over, I wonder, ‘Why are you here, Ashley Wilkes? What are you fighting for?’
“Not for honor and glory, certainly. War is a dirty business and I do not like dirt. I am not asoldier and I have no desire to seek the bubble reputation even in the cannon’s mouth. Yet, here Iam at the wars—whom God never intended to be other than a studious country gentleman. For,Melanie, bugles do not stir my blood nor drums entice my feet and I see too clearly that we havebeen betrayed, betrayed by our arrogant Southern selves, believing that one of us could whip adozen Yankees, believing that King Cotton could rule the world. Betrayed, too, by words and catchphrases, prejudices and hatreds coming from the mouths of those highly placed, those men whomwe respected and revered—‘King Cotton, Slavery, States’ Rights, Damn Yankees.’
“And so when I lie on my blanket and look up at the stars and say ‘What are you fighting for?’
think of States’ Rights and cotton and the darkies and the Yankees whom we have been bred tohate, and I know that none of these is the reason why I am fighting. Instead, I see Twelve Oaks andremember how the moonlight slants across the white columns, and the unearthly way themagnolias look, opening under the moon, and how the climbing roses make the side porch shadyeven at the hottest noon. And I see Mother, sewing there, as she did when I was a little boy. And I hear the darkies coming home across the fields at dusk, tired and singing and ready for supper, andthe sound of the windlass as the bucket goes down into the cool well. And there’s the long viewdown the road to the river, across the cotton fields, and the mist rising from the bottom lands in thetwilight. And that is why I’m here who have no love of death or misery or glory and no hatred foranyone. Perhaps that is what is called patriotism, love of home and country. But Melanie, it goesdeeper than that. For, Melanie, these things I have named are but the symbols of the thing forwhich I risk my life, symbols of the kind of life I love. For I am fighting for the old days, the oldways I love so much but which, I fear, are now gone forever, no matter how the die may fall. For,win or lose, we lose just the same.
“If we win this war and have the Cotton Kingdom of our dreams, we still have lost, for we willbecome a different people and the old quiet ways will go. The world will be at our doors clamoringfor cotton and we can command our own price. Then, I fear, we will become like the Yankees, atwhose money-making activities, acquisitiveness and commercialism we now sneer. And if we lose,Melanie, if we lose!
“I am not afraid of danger or capture or wounds or even death, if death must come, but I do fearthat once this war is over, we will never get back to the old times. And I belong in those old times.
I do not belong in this mad present of killing and I fear I will not fit into any future, try though Imay. Nor will you, my dear, for you and I are of the same blood. I do not know what the future willbring, but it cannot be as beautiful or as satisfying as the past.
“I lie and look at the boys sleeping near me and I wonder if the twins or Alex or Cade thinkthese same thoughts. I wonder if they know they are fighting for a Cause that was lost the minutethe first shot was fired, for our Cause is really our own way of living and that is gone already. But Ido not think they think these things and they are lucky.
“I had not thought of this for us when I asked you to marry me. I had thought of life going on atTwelve Oaks as it had always done, peacefully, easily, unchanging. We are alike, Melanie, lovingthe same quiet things, and I saw before us a long stretch of uneventful years in which to read, hearmusic and dream. But not this! Never this! That this could happen to us all, this wrecking of oldways, this bloody slaughter and hate! Melanie, nothing is worth it—States’ Rights, nor slaves, norcotton. No............