Gone With the Wind《飘》Part 24

“You must stop!”
“You don’t understand. She didn’t want a baby and I made her. This—this baby—it’s all my damned fault. We hadn’t been sleeping together—”
“Hush, Captain Butler! It is not fit—”
“And I was drunk and insane and I wanted to hurt her—because she had hurt me. I wanted to—and I did— but she didn’t want me. She’s never wanted me. She never has and I tried—I tried so hard and—”
“Oh, please!”
“And I didn’t know about this baby till the other day— when she fell: She didn’t know where I was to write to me and tell me—but she wouldn’t have written me if she had known. I tell you—I tell you I’d have come straight home—if I’d only known—whether she wanted me home or not. ...”
“Oh, yes, I know you would!”
“God, I’ve been crazy these weeks, crazy and drunk! And when she told me, there on the steps—what did I do? What did I say? I laughed and said: ‘Cheer up. Maybe you’ll have a miscarriage.’ And she—”
Melanie suddenly went white and her eyes widened with horror as she looked down at the black tormented head writhing in her lap. The afternoon sun streamed in through the open window and suddenly she saw, as for the first time, how large and brown and strong his hands were and how thickly the black hairs grew along the backs of them. Involuntarily, she recoiled from them. They seemed so predatory, so ruthless and yet, twined in her skirt, so broken, so helpless.
Could it be possible that he had heard and believed the preposterous lie about Scarlett and Ashley and become jealous? True, he had left town immediately after the scandal broke but— No, it couldn’t be that. Captain But¬ler was always going off abruptly on journeys. He couldn’t have believed the gossip. He was too sensible. If that had been the cause of the trouble, wouldn’t he have tried to shoot Ashley? Or at least demanded an explanation?
No, it couldn’t be that. It was only that he was drunk and sick from strain and his mind was running wild, like a man delirious, babbling wild fantasies. Men couldn’t stand strains as well as women. Something had upset him, per¬haps he had had a small quarrel with Scarlett and mag¬nified it. Perhaps some of the awful things he said were true. But all of them could not be true. Oh, not that last, certainly! No man could say such a thing to a woman he loved as passionately as this man loved. Scarlett Melanie had never seen evil, never seen cruelty, and now that she looked on them for the first time she found them too in¬conceivable to believe. He was drunk and sick. And sick children must be humored.
“There! There!” she said crooningly. “Hush, now. I un¬derstand.”
He raised his head violently and looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, fiercely throwing off her hands.
“No, by God, you don’t understand! You can’t under¬stand! You’re—you’re too good to understand. You don’t believe me but it’s all true and I’m a dog. Do you know why I did it? I was mad, crazy with jealousy. She never cared for me and I thought I could make her care. But she never cared. She doesn’t love me. She never has. She loves—”
His passionate, drunken gaze met hers and he stopped, mouth open, as though for the first time he realized to whom he was speaking. Her face was white and strained but her eyes were steady and sweet and full of pity and unbelief. There was a luminous serenity in them and the innocence in the soft brown depths struck him like a blow in the face, clearing some of the alcohol out of his brain, halting his mad, careering words in mid-flight. He trailed off into a mumble, his eyes dropping away from hers, his lids batting rapidly as he fought back to sanity.
“I’m a cad,” he muttered, dropping his head tiredly back into her lap. “But not that big a cad. And if I did tell you, you wouldn’t believe me, would you? You’re too good to believe me. I never before knew anybody who was really good. You wouldn’t believe me, would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t believe you,” said Melanie soothingly