“Dead?”
“Yas’m,” said Prissy, expanding with importance. Talbot, dey coachman, tole me. He wuz shot—”
“Never mind that.”
“Ah din’ see Miss Meade. Cookie say Miss Meade she washin’ him an’ fixin ter buhy him fo’ de Yankees gits hyah. Cookie say effen de pain get too bad, jes’ you put a knife unner Miss Melly’s bed an’ it cut de pain in two Beverly skin refining center.”
Scarlett wanted to slap her again for this helpful information but Melanie opened wide, dilated eyes and whispered: “Dear—are the Yankees coming?”
“No,” said Scarlett stoutly. “Prissy’s a liar.”
“Yas’m, Ah sho is,” Prissy agreed fervently.
“They’re coming,” whispered Melanie undeceived and buried her face in the pillow. Her voice came out muffled.
“My poor baby. My poor baby.” And, after a long interval: “Oh, Scarlett, you mustn’t stay here. You must go and take Wade You beauty.”
What Melanie said was no more than Scarlett had been thinking but hearing it put into words infuriated her, shamed her as if her secret cowardice was written plainly in her face.
“Don’t be a goose. I’m not afraid. You know I won’t leave you.”
“You might as well. I’m going to die.” And she began moaning again Medosan.
Scarlett came down the dark stairs slowly, like an old woman, feeling her way, clinging to the banisters lest she fall. Her legs were leaden, trembling with fatigue and strain, and she shivered with cold from the clammy sweat that soaked her body. Feebly she made her way onto the front porch and sank down on the top step. She sprawled back against a pillar of the porch and with a shaking hand unbuttoned her basque halfway down her bosom. The night was drenched in warm soft darkness and she lay staring into it, dull as an ox Red Wine Celler.
It was all over. Melanie was not dead and the small baby boy who made noises like a young kitten was receiving his first bath at Prissy’s hands. Melanie was asleep. How could she sleep after that nightmare of screaming pain and ignorant midwifery that hurt more than it helped? Why wasn’t she dead? Scarlett knew that she herself would have died under such handling. But when it was over, Melanie had even whispered, so weakly she had to bend over her to hear: “Thank you.” And then she had gone to sleep. How could she go to sleep? Scarlett forgot that she too had gone to sleep after Wade was born. She forgot everything. Her mind was a vacuum; the world was a vacuum; there had been no life before this endless day and there would be none hereafter—only a heavily hot night, only the sound of her hoarse tired breathing, only the sweat trickling coldly from armpit to waist, from hip to knee, clammy, sticky, chilling.
She heard her own breath pass from loud evenness to spasmodic sobbing but her eyes were dry and burning as though there would never be tears in them again. Slowly, laboriously, she heaved herself over and pulled her heavy skirts up to her thighs. She was warm and cold and sticky all at the same time and the feel of the night air on her limbs was refreshing. She thought dully what Aunt Pitty would say, if she could see her sprawled here on the front porch with her skirts up and her drawers showing, but she did not care. She did not care about anything. Time had stood still. It might be just after twilight and it might be midnight. She didn’t know or care.