“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,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 thought 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 his 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'debut 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—”
