"You are just low enough to think of something like that," she cried, annoyed that nothing was going as she planned it. "If you had any chivalry you'd -- you'd be nice like -- Well, look at Ashley Wilkes.' Melanie can't have any children and he -- "
"Quite the little gentleman, Ashley," said Rhett and his eyes began to gleam oddly. "Pray go on with your discourse."
Scarlett choked, for her discourse was at its end and she had nothing more to say. Now she saw how foolish had been her hope of amicably settling so important a matter, especially with a selfish swine like Rhett.
"You've been to the lumber office this afternoon, haven't you?"
"What has that to do with it?"
"You like dogs, don't you, Scarlett? Do you prefer them in kennels or mangers?"
The allusion was lost on her as the tide of her anger and disappointment rose.
He got lightly to his feet and coming to her put his hand under her chin and jerked her face up to his.
"What a child you are! You have lived with three men and still know nothing of men's natures. You seem to think they are like old ladies past the change of life."
He pinched her chin playfully and his hand dropped away from her. One black eyebrow went up as he bent a cool long look on her.
"Scarlett, understand this. If you and your bed still held any charms for me, no looks and no entreaties could keep me away. And I would have no sense of shame for anything I did, for I made a bargain with you -- a bargain which I have kept and you are now breaking. Keep your chaste bed, my dear."
"Do you mean to tell me," cried Scarlett indignantly, "that you don't care --"
"You have tired of me, haven't you? Well, men tire more easily than women. Keep your sanctity, Scarlett. It will work no hardship on me. It doesn't matter," he shrugged and grinned. "Fortunately the world is full of beds--and most of the beds are full of women."
"You mean you'd actually be so --"
"My dear innocent! But, of course. It's a wonder I haven't strayed long ere this. I never held fidelity to be a virtue."
"I shall lock my door every night!"
"Why bother? If I wanted you, no lock would keep me out."
He turned, as though the subject were closed, and left the room. Scarlett heard him going back to the nursery where he was welcomed by the children. She sat down abruptly. She had had her way. This was what she wanted and Ashley wanted. But it was not making her happy. Her vanity was sore and she was mortified at the thought that Rhett had taken it all so lightly, that he didn't want her, that he put her on the level of other women in other beds.
She wished she could think of some delicate way to tell Ashley that she and Rhett were no longer actually man and wife. But she knew now she could not. It all seemed a terrible mess now and she half heartedly wished she had said nothing about it. She would miss the long amusing conversations in bed with Rhett when the ember of his cigar glowed in the dark. She would miss the comfort of his arms when she woke terrified from the dreams that she was running through cold mist.
Suddenly she felt very unhappy and leaning her head on the arm of the chair, she cried.
CHAPTER LII
ONE RAINY AFTERNOON when Bonnie was barely past her first birthday, Wade moped about the sitting room, occasionally going to the window and flattening his nose on the dripping pane. He was a slender, weedy boy, small for his eight years, quiet almost to shyness, never speaking unless spoken to. He was bored and obviously at loss for entertainment, for Ella was busy in the corner with her dolls, Scarlett was at her secretary muttering to herself as she added a long column of figures, and Rhett was lying on the floor, swinging his watch by its chain, just out of Bonnie's reach.
After Wade had picked up several books and let them drop with bangs and sighed deeply, Scarlett turned to him in irritation.
"Heavens, Wade! Run out and play."
"I can't. It's raining."
"Is it? I hadn't noticed. Well, do something. You make me nervous, fidgeting about. Go tell Pork to hitch up the carriage and take you over to play with Beau."
"He isn't home," sighed Wade. "He's at Raoul Picard's birthday party."
Raoul was the small son of Maybelle and Rene Picard -- a detestable little brat, Scarlett thought, more like an ape than a child.
"Well, you can go to see anyone you want to. Run tell Pork."
"Nobody's at home," answered Wade. "Everybody's at the party."
The unspoken words "everybody -- but me" hung in the air; but Scarlett, her mind on her account books, paid no heed.
Rhett raised himself to a sitting posture and said: "Why aren't you at the party too, son?"
Wade edged closer to him, scuffing one foot and looking unhappy.
"I wasn't invited, sir."
Rhett handed his watch into Bonnie's destructive grasp and rose lightly to his feet.
"Leave those damned figures alone, Scarlett. Why wasn't Wade invited to this party?"
"For Heaven's sake, Rhett! Don't bother me now. Ashley has gotten these accounts in an awful snarl -- Oh, that party? Well, I think it's nothing unusual that Wade wasn't invited and I wouldn't let him go if he had been. Don't forget that Raoul is Mrs. Merriwether's grandchild and Mrs. Merriwether would as soon have a free issue nigger in her sacred parlor as one of us."
Rhett, watching Wade's face with meditative eyes, saw the boy flinch.
"Come here, son," he said, drawing the boy to him. "Would you like to be at that party?"
"No, sir," said Wade bravely but his eyes fell.
"Hum. Tell me, Wade, do you go to little Joe Whiting's parties or Frank Bonnell's or -- well, any of your playmates?"
"No, sir. I don't get invited to many parties."
"Wade, you are lying!" cried Scarlett, turning. "You went to three last week, the Bart children's party and the Gelerts' and the Hundons'."
"As choice a collection of mules in horse harness as you could group together," said Rhett, his voice going into a soft drawl. "Did you have a good time at those parties? Speak up."
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"I -- I dunno, sir. Mammy -- Mammy says they're white trash."
"I'll skin Mammy this minute!" cried Scarlett, leaping to her feet "And as for you, Wade, talking so about Mother's friends --"
"The boy's telling the truth and so is Mammy," said Rhett. "But, of course, you've never been able to know the truth if you met it in the road. ... Don't bother, son. You don't have to go to any more parties you don't want to go to. Here," he pulled a bill from his pocket, "tell Pork to harness the carriage and take you downtown. Buy yourself some candy -- a lot, enough to give you a wonderful stomach ache."
Wade, beaming, pocketed the bill and looked anxiously toward his mother for confirmation. But she, with a pucker in her brows, was watching Rhett. He had picked Bonnie from the floor and was cradling her to him, her small face against his cheek. She could not read his face but there was something in his eyes almost like fear -- fear and self-accusation.
Wade, encouraged by his stepfather's generosity, came shyly toward him.
"Uncle Rhett, can I ask you sumpin'?"
"Of course." Rhett's look was anxious, absent, as he held Bonnie's head closer. "What is it, Wade?"
"Uncle Rhett, were you -- did you fight in the war?"
Rhett's eyes came alertly back and they were sharp, but his voice was casual.
"Why do you ask, son?"
"Well, Joe Whiting said you didn't and so did Frankie Bonnell."
"Ah," said Rhett, "and what did you tell them?"
Wade looked unhappy.
"I -- I said -- I told them I didn't know." And with a rush, "But I didn't care and I hit them. Were you in the war, Uncle Rhett?"
"Yes," said Rhett, suddenly violent "I was in the war. I was in the army for eight months. I fought all the way from Lovejoy up to Franklin, Tennessee. And I was with Johnston when he surrendered."
Wade wriggled with pride but Scarlett laughed.
"I though
t you were ashamed of your war record," she said. "Didn't you tell me to keep it quiet?"
"Hush," he said briefly. "Does that satisfy you, Wade?"
"Oh, yes, sir! I knew you were in the war. I knew you weren't scared like they said. But -- why weren't you with the other little boys' fathers?"
"Because the other little boys' fathers were such fools they had to put them in the infantry. I was a West Pointer and so I was in the artillery. In the regular artillery, Wade, not the Home Guard. It takes a pile of sense to be in the artillery, Wade."
"I bet," said Wade, his face shining. "Did you get wounded, Uncle Rhett?'
Rhett hesitated.
"Tell him about your dysentery," jeered Scarlett.
Rhett carefully set the baby on the floor and pulled his shirt and undershirt out of his trouser band.
"Come here, Wade, and I'll show you where I was wounded."
Wade advanced, excited, and gazed where Rhett's finger pointed. A long raised scar ran across his brown chest and down into his heavily muscled abdomen. It was the souvenir of a knife fight in the California gold fields but Wade did not know it. He breathed heavily and happily.
"I guess you're 'bout as brave as my father, Uncle Rhett."
"Almost but not quite," said Rhett, stuffing his shirt into his trousers. "Now, go on and spend your dollar and whale hell out of any boy who says I wasn't in the army."
Wade went dancing out happily, calling to Pork, and Rhett picked up the baby again.
"Now why all these lies, my gallant soldier laddie?" asked Scarlett.
"A boy has to be proud of his father -- or stepfather. I can't let him be ashamed before the other little brutes. Cruel creatures, children."
"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!"
"I never thought about what it meant to Wade," said Rhett slowly. "I never thought how he's suffered. And it's not going to be that way for Bonnie."
"What way?"
"Do you think I'm going to have my Bonnie ashamed of her father? Have her left out of parties when she's nine or ten? Do you think I'm going to have her humiliated like Wade for things that aren't her fault but yours and mine?"
"Oh, children's parties!"
"Out of children's parties grow young girls' d e but parties. Do you think I'm going to let my daughter grow up outside of everything decent in Atlanta? I'm not going to send her North to school and to visit because she won't be accepted here or in Charleston or Savannah or New Orleans. And I'm not going to see her forced to marry a Yankee or a foreigner because no decent Southern family will have her -- because her mother was a fool and her father a blackguard."
Wade, who had come back to the door, was an interested but puzzled listener.
"Bonnie can marry Beau, Uncle Rhett."
The anger went from Rhett's face as he turned to the little boy, and he considered his words with apparent seriousness as he always did when dealing with the children.
"That's true, Wade. Bonnie can marry Beau Wilkes, but who will you marry?"
"Oh, I shan't marry anyone," said Wade confidently, luxuriating in a man-to-man talk with the one person, except Aunt Melly, who never reproved and always encouraged him. "I'm going to go to Harvard and be a lawyer, like my father, and then I'm going to be a brave soldier just like him."
"I wish Melly would keep her mouth shut," cried Scarlett. "Wade, you are not going to Harvard. It's a Yankee school and I won't have you going to a Yankee school. You are going to the University of Georgia and after you graduate you are going to manage the store for me. And as for your father being a brave soldier --"
"Hush," said Rhett curtly, not missing the shining light in Wade's eyes when he spoke of the father he had never known. "You grow up and be a brave man like your father, Wade. Try to be just like him, for he was a hero and don't let anyone tell you differently. He married your mother, didn't he? Well, that's proof enough of heroism. And I'll see that you go to Harvard and become a lawyer. Now, run along and tell Pork to take you to town."
"I'll thank you to let me manage my children," cried Scarlett as Wade obediently trotted from the room.
"You're a damned poor manager. You've wrecked whatever chances Ella and Wade had, but I won't permit you to do Bonnie that way. Bonnie's going to be a little princess and everyone in the world is going to want her. There's not going to be any place she can't go. Good God, do you think I'm going to let her grow up and associate with the riffraff that fills this house?"
"They are good enough for you --"
"And a damned sight too good for you, my pet. But not for Bonnie. Do you think I'd let her marry any of this runagate gang you spend your time with? Irishmen on the make, Yankees, white trash, Carpetbag parvenus -- My Bonnie with her Butler blood and her Robillard strain --"
The O'Haras --"
The O'Haras might have been kings of Ireland once but your father was nothing but a smart Mick on the make. And you are no better -- But then, I'm at fault too. I've gone through life like a bat out of hell, never caring what I did, because nothing ever mattered to me. But Bonnie matters. God, what a fool I've been! Bonnie wouldn't be received in Charleston, no matter what my mother or your Aunt Eulalie or Aunt Pauline did -- and it's obvious that she won't be received here unless we do something quickly --"
"Oh, Rhett, you take it so seriously you're funny. With our money --"
"Damn our money! All our money can't buy what I want for her. I'd rather Bonnie was invited to eat dry bread in the Picards' miserable house or Mrs. Elsing's rickety barn than to be the belle of a Republican inaugural ball. Scarlett, you've been a fool. You should have insured a place for your children in the social scheme years ago -- but you didn't. You didn't even bother to keep what position you had. And it's too much to hope that you'll mend your ways at this late date. You're too anxious to make money and too fond of bullying people."
"I consider this whole affair a tempest in a teapot," said Scarlett coldly, rattling her papers to indicate that as far as she was concerned the discussion was finished.
"We have only Mrs. Wilkes to help us and you do your best to alienate and insult her. Oh, spare me your remarks about her poverty and her tacky clothes. She's the soul and the center of everything in Atlanta that's sterling. Thank God for her. She'll help me do something about it."
"And what are you going to do?"
"Do? I'm going to cultivate every female dragon of the Old Guard in this town, especially Mrs. Merriwether, Mrs. Elsing, Mrs. Whiting and Mrs. Meade. If I have to crawl on my belly to every fat old cat who hates me, I'll do it. I'll be meek under their coldness and repentant of my evil ways. I'll contribute to their damned charities and I'll go to their damned churches. I'll admit and brag about my services to the Confederacy and, if worst comes to worst, I'll join their damned Klan -- though a merciful God could hardly lay so heavy a penance on my shoulders as that. And I shall not hesitate to remind the fools whose necks I saved that they owe me a debt. And you, Madam, will kindly refrain from undoing my work behind my back and foreclosing mortgages on any of the people I'm courting or selling them rotten lumber or in other ways insulting them. And Governor Bullock never sets foot in this house again. Do you hear? And none of this gang of elegant thieves you've been associating with, either. If you do invite them, over my request, you will find yourself in the embarrassing position of having no host in your home. If they come in this house, I will spend the time in Belle Watling's bar telling anyone who cares to hear that I won't stay under the same roof with them."
Scarlett, who had been smarting under his words, laughed shortly.
"So the river-boat gambler and the speculator is going to be respectable! Well, your first move toward respectability had better be the sale of Belle Watling's house."
That was a shot in the dark. She had never been absolutely certain that Rhett owned the house. He laughed suddenly, as though he read her mind.
"Thanks for the suggestion."
Had he tried, Rhett could not have chosen a more difficult time to beat his way back t
o respectability. Never before or after did the names Republican and Scalawag carry such odium, for now the corruption of the Carpet bag regime was at its height. And, since the surrender, Rhett's name had been inextricably linked with Yankees, Republicans and Scalawags.
Atlanta people had thought, with helpless fury, in 1866, that nothing could be worse than the harsh military rule they had then, but now, under Bullock, they were learning the worst. Thanks to the negro vote, the Republicans and their allies were firmly entrenched and they were riding rough-shod over the powerless but still protesting minority.
Word had been spread among the negroes that there were only two political parties mentioned in the Bible, the Publicans and the Sinners. No negro wanted to join a party made up entirely of sinners, so they hastened to join the Republicans. Their new masters voted them over and over again, electing poor whites and Scalawags to high places, electing even some negroes. These negroes sat in the legislature where they spent most of their time eating goobers and easing their unaccustomed feet into and out of new shoes. Few of them could read or write. They were fresh from cotton patch and canebrake, but it was within their power to vote taxes and bonds as well as enormous expense accounts to themselves and their Republican friends. And they voted them. The state staggered under taxes which were paid in fury, for the taxpayers knew that much of the money voted for public purposes was finding its way into private pockets.
Completely surrounding the state capital was a host of promoters, speculators, seekers after contracts and others hoping to profit from the orgy of spending, and many were growing shamelessly rich. They had no difficulty at all in obtaining the state's money for building railroads that were never built, for buying cars and engines that were never bought, for erecting public buildings that never existed except in the minds of their promoters.
Bonds were issued running into the millions. Most of them were illegal and fraudulent but they were issued just the same. The state treasurer, a Republican but an honest man, protested against the illegal issues and refused to sign them, but he and others who sought to check the abuses could do nothing against the tide that was running.
The state-owned railroad had once been an asset to the state but now it was a liability and its debts had piled up to the million mark. It was no longer a railroad. It was an enormous bottomless trough in which the hogs could swill and wallow. Many of its officials were appointed for political reasons, regardless of their knowledge of the operation of railroads, there were three times as many people employed as were necessary, Republicans rode free on passes, carloads of negroes rode free on their happy jaunts about the state to vote and revote in the same elections.
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