He was untidy now, where once he had been well groomed, and it took all Pork’s scandalized arguing even to make him change his linen before supper. Whisky was showing in his face and the hard line of his long jaw was being obscured under an unhealthy bloat and puffs rising under his bloodshot eyes. His big body with its hard swelling muscles looked soft and slack and his waist line began to thicken.
Often he did not come home at all or even send word that he would be away overnight. Of course, he might be snoring drunkenly in some room above a saloon, but Scarlett always believed that he was at Belle Watling’s house on these occasions. Once she had seen Belle in a store, a coarse overblown woman now, with most of her good looks gone. But, for all her paint and flashy clothes, she was buxom and almost motherly looking. Instead of dropping her eyes or glaring defiantly, as did other light women when confronted by ladies, Belle gave her stare for stare, searching her face with an intent, almost pitying look that brought a flush to Scarlett’s cheek.
But she could not accuse him now, could not rage at him, demand fidelity or try to shame him, any more than she could bring herself to apologize for accusing him of Bonnie’s death. She was clutched by a bewildered apathy, an unhappiness that she could not understand, an unhappiness that went deeper than anything she had ever known. She was lonely and she could never remember being so lonely before. Perhaps she had never had the time to be very lonely until now. She was lonely and afraid and there was no one to whom she could turn, no one except Melanie. For now, even Mammy, her mainstay, had gone back to Tara. Gone permanently.
Mammy gave no explanation for her departure. Her tired old eyes looked sadly at Scarlett when she asked for the train fare home. To Scarlett’s tears and pleading that she stay, Mammy only answered: “Look ter me lak Miss Ellen say ter me: ‘Mammy, come home. Yo’ wuk done finish.’ So Ah’s gwine home.”
Rhett, who had listened to the talk, gave Mammy the money and patted her arm.
“You’re right, Mammy. Miss Ellen is right. Your work here is done. Go home. Let me know if you ever need anything.” And as Scarlett broke into renewed indignant commands: “Hush, you fool! Let her go! Why should anyone want to stay in this house – now?”
There was such a savage bright glitter in his eyes when he spoke that Scarlett shrank from him, frightened.
“Dr. Meade, do you think he can – can have lost his mind?” she questioned afterwards, driven to the doctor by her own sense of helplessness.
“No,” said the doctor, “but he’s drinking like a fish and will kill himself if he keeps it up. He loved the child, Scarlett, and I guess he drinks to forget about her. No, my advice to you, Miss, is to give him another baby just as quickly as you can.”
“Hah!” thought Scarlett bitterly, as she left his office. That was easier said than done. She would gladly have another child, several children, if they would take that look out of Rhett’s eyes and fill up the aching spaces in her own heart. A boy who had Rhett’s dark handsomeness and another little girl. Oh, for another girl, pretty and gay and willful and full of laughter, not like the giddy-brained Ella. Why, oh, why couldn’t God have taken Ella if He had to take one of her children? Ella was no comfort to her, now that Bonnie was gone. But Rhett did not seem to want any other children. At least he never came to her bedroom, though now the door was never locked and usually invitingly ajar. He did not seem to care. He did not seem to care for anything now except whisky and that blowzy red-haired woman.
He was bitter now, where he had been pleasantly jeering, brutal where his thrusts had once been tempered with humor. After Bonnie died, many of the good ladies of the neighborhood who had been won over to him by his charming manners with his daughter were anxious to show him kindness. They stopped him on the street to give him their sympathy and spoke to him from over their hedges, saying that they understood. But now that Bonnie, the reason for his good manners, was gone the manners went to. He cut the ladies and their well-meant condolences off shortly, rudely.