第80章

Melanie and Pittypat had gone to sleep hours before, but Scarlett lay awake in the warm darkness, her heart heavy and frightened in her breast. To leave Atlanta when life had just begun again and go home and face Ellen! She would rather die than face her mother. She wished she were dead, this very minute, then everyone would be sorry they had been so hateful. She turned and tossed on the hot pillow until a noise far up the quiet street reached her ears. It was an oddly familiar noise, blurred and indistinct though it was. She slipped out of bed and went to the window. The street with its over-arching trees was softly, deeply black under a dim star-studded sky. The noise came closer, the sound of wheels, the plod of a horse’s hooves and voices. And suddenly she grinned for, as a voice thick with brogue and whisky came to her, raised in “Peg in a Low-backed Car,” she knew. This might not be Jonesboro on Court Day, but Gerald was coming home in the same condition.

She saw the dark bulk of a buggy stop in front of the house and indistinct figures alight. Someone was with him. Two figures paused at the gate and she heard the click of the latch and Gerald’s voice came plain.

“Now I’ll be giving you the ‘Lament for Robert Emmet.’ Tis a song you should be knowing, me lad. I’ll teach It to you.”

“I’d like to learn it,” replied his companion, a hint of buried laughter in his flat drawling voice. “But not now, Mr. O’Hara.”

“Oh, my God, it’s that hateful Butler man!” thought Scarlett, at first annoyed. Then she took heart. At least they hadn’t shot each other. And they must be on amicable terms to be coming home together at this hour and in this condition.

“Sing it I will and listen you will or I’ll be shooting you for the Orangeman you are.”

“Not Orangeman—Charlestonian.”

“ ‘Tis no better. ‘Tis worse. I have two sister-in-laws in Charleston and I know.”

“Is he going to tell the whole neighborhood?” thought Scarlett panic-stricken, reaching for her wrapper. But what could she do? She couldn’t go downstairs at this hour of the night and drag her father in from the street.

With no further warning, Gerald, who was hanging on the gate, threw back his head and began the “Lament,” in a roaring bass. Scarlett rested her elbows on the window sill and listened, grinning unwillingly. It would be a beautiful song, if only her father could carry a tune. It was one of her favorite songs and, for a moment, she followed the fine melancholy of those verses beginning:

“She is far from the land where her young hero sleepsAnd lovers are round her sighing.”

The song went on and she heard stirrings in Pittypat’s and Melly’s rooms. Poor things, they’d certainly be upset. They were not used to full-blooded males like Gerald. When the song had finished, two forms merged into one, came up the walk and mounted the steps. A discreet knock sounded at the door.

“I suppose I must go down,” thought Scarlett. “After all he’s my father and poor Pitty would die before she’d go.” Besides, she didn’t want the servants to see Gerald in his present condition. And if Peter tried to put him to bed, he might get unruly. Pork was the only one who knew how to handle him.

She pinned the wrapper close about her throat, lit her bedside candle and hurried down the dark stairs into the front hall. Setting the candle on the stand, she unlocked the door and in the wavering light she saw Rhett Butler, not a ruffle disarranged, supporting her small, thickset father. The “Lament” had evidently been Gerald’s swan song for he was frankly hanging onto his companion’s arm. His hat was gone, his crisp long hair was tumbled in a white mane, his cravat was under one ear, and there were liquor stains down his shirt bosom.

“Your father, I believe?” said Captain Butler, his eyes amused in his swarthy face. He took in her dishabille in one glance that seemed to penetrate through her wrapper.

“Bring him in,” she said shortly, embarrassed at her attire, infuriated at Gerald for putting her in a position where this man could laugh at her.

Rhett propelled Gerald forward. “Shall I help you take him upstairs? You cannot manage him. He’s quite heavy.”

Her mouth fell open with horror at the audacity of his proposal. Just imagine what Pittypat and Melly cowering in their beds would think, should Captain Butler come upstairs!

“Mother of God, no! In here, in the parlor on that settee.”

“The suttee, did you say?”

“I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Here. Now lay him down.”

“Shall I take off his boots?”

“No. He’s slept in them before.”

She could have bitten off her tongue for that slip, for he laughed softly as he crossed Gerald’s legs.

“Please go, now.”

He walked out into the dim hall and picked up the hat he had dropped on the doorsill.

“I will be seeing you Sunday at dinner,” he said and went out, closing the door noiselessly behind him.

Scarlett arose at five-thirty, before the servants had come in from the back yard to start breakfast, and slipped down the steps to the quiet lower floor. Gerald was awake, sitting on the sofa, his hands gripping his bullet head as if he wished to crush it between his palms. He looked up furtively as she entered. The pain of moving his eyes was too excruciating to be borne and he groaned.

“Wurra the day!”

“It’s a fine way you’ve acted, Pa,” she began in a furious whisper. “Coming home at such an hour and waking all the neighbors with your singing.”

“I sang?”

“Sang! You woke the echoes singing the ‘Lament.’ ”

“ ‘Tis nothing I’m remembering.”

“The neighbors will remember it till their dying day and so will Miss Pittypat and Melanie.”

“Mother of Sorrows,” moaned Gerald, moving a thickly furred tongue around parched lips. “ ‘Tis little I’m remembering after the game started.”

“Game?”

“That laddybuck Butler bragged that he was the best poker player in—”

“How much did you lose?”

“Why, I won, naturally. A drink or two helps me game.”

“Look in your wallet.”

As if every movement was agony, Gerald removed his wallet from his coat and opened it. It was empty and he looked at it in forlorn bewilderment.