At the mention of Ashley’s name, Scarlett’s overwrought nerves gave way and she burst into tears. Would she never stop stabbing him to the heart? Her only thought had been to make him happy and safe but at every turn she seemed to hurt him. She had wrecked his life, broken his pride and self-respect, shattered that inner peace, that calm based on integrity. And now she had alienated him from the sister he loved so dearly. To save her own reputation and his wife’s happiness, India had to be sacrificed, forced into the light of a lying, half-crazed, jealous old maid—India who was absolutely justified in every suspicion she had ever harbored and every accusing word she had uttered. Whenever Ashley looked into India’s eyes, he would see the truth shining there, truth and reproach and the cold contempt of which the Wilkeses were masters.
Knowing how Ashley valued honor above his life, Scarlett knew he must be writhing. He, like Scarlett, was forced to shelter behind Melanie’s skirts. While Scarlett realized the necessity for this and knew that the blame for his false position lay mostly at her own door, still—still— Womanlike she would have respected Ashley more, had he shot Archie and admitted everything to Melanie and the world. She knew she was being unfair but she was too miserable to care for such fine points. Some of Rhett’s taunting words of contempt came back to her and she wondered if indeed Ashley had played the manly part in this mess. And, for the first time, some of the bright glow which had enveloped him since the first day she fell in love with him began to fade imperceptibly. The tarnish of shame and guilt that enveloped her spread to him as well. Resolutely she tried to fight off this thought but it only made her cry harder.
“Don’t! Don’t!” cried Melanie, dropping her tatting and flinging herself onto the sofa and drawing Scarlett’s head down onto her shoulder. “I shouldn’t have talked about it all and distressed you so. I know how dreadfully you must feel and we’ll never mention it again. No, not to each other or to anybody. It’ll be as though it never happened. But,” she added with quiet venom, “I’m going to show India and Mrs. Elsing what’s what. They needn’t think they can spread lies about my husband and my sister-in-law. I’m going to fix it so neither of them can hold up their heads in Atlanta. And anybody who believes them or receives them is my enemy.”
Scarlett, looking sorrowfully down the long vista of years to come, knew that she was the cause of a feud that would split the town and the family for generations.
Melanie was as good as her word. She never again mentioned the subject to Scarlett or to Ashley. Nor, for that matter, would she discuss it with anyone. She maintained an air of cool indifference that could speedily change to icy formality if anyone even dared hint about the matter. During the weeks that followed her surprise party, while Rhett was mysteriously absent and the town in a frenzied state of gossip, excitement and partisanship, she gave no quarter to Scarlett’s detractors, whether they were her old friends or her blood kin. She did not speak, she acted.
She stuck by Scarlett’s side like a cocklebur. She made Scarlett go to the store and the lumber yard, as usual, every morning and she went with her. She insisted that Scarlett go driving in the afternoons, little though Scarlett wished to expose herself to the eager carious gaze of her fellow townspeople. And Melanie sat in the carriage beside her. Melanie took her calling with her on formal afternoons, gently forcing her into parlors in which Scarlett had not sat for more than two years. And Melanie, with a fierce “love-me-love-my-dog” look on her face, made converse with astounded hostesses.
She made Scarlett arrive early on these afternoons and remain until the last callers had gone, thereby depriving the ladies of the opportunity for enjoyable group discussion and speculation, a matter which caused some mild indignation. These calls were an especial torment to Scarlett but she dared not refuse to go with Melanie. She hated to sit amid crowds of women who were secretly wondering if she had been actually taken in adultery. She hated the knowledge that these women would not have spoken to her, had it not been that they loved Melanie and did not want to lose her friendship. But Scarlett knew that, having once received her, they could not cut her thereafter.
It was characteristic of the regard in which Scarlett was held that few people based their defense or their criticism of her on her personal integrity. “I wouldn’t put much beyond her,” was the universal attitude. Scarlett had made too many enemies to have many champions now. Her words and her actions rankled in too many hearts for many people to care whether this scandal hurt her or not. But everyone cared violently about hurting Melanie or India and the storm revolved around them, rather than Scarlett, centering upon the one question—“Did India lie?”
Those who espoused Melanie’s side pointed triumphantly to the fact that Melanie was constantly with Scarlett these days. Would a woman of Melanie’s high principles champion the cause of a guilty woman, especially a woman guilty with her own husband? No, indeed! India was just a cracked old maid who hated Scarlett and lied about her and induced Archie and Mrs. Elsing to believe her lies.
But, questioned India’s adherents, if Scarlett isn’t guilty, where is Captain Butler? Why isn’t he here at his wife’s side, lending her the strength of his countenance? That was an unanswerable question and, as the weeks went by and the rumor spread that Scarlett was pregnant, the pro-India group nodded with satisfaction. It couldn’t be Captain Butler’s baby, they said. For too long the fact of their estrangement had been public property. For too long the town had been scandalized by the separate bedrooms.