Out of it all only the fact that he loved her meant anything.At the faint echo of passion in his voice,pleasure and excitement crept back into her.She sat,hardly breathing,listening,waiting.
“I knew you didn't love me when I married you.I knew about Ashley,you see.But,fool that I was,I thought I could make you care.Laugh,if you like,but I wanted to take care of you,to pet you,to give you everything you wanted.I wanted to marry you and protect you and give you a free rein in anything that would make you happy—just as I did Bonnie.You'd had such a struggle,Scarlett.No one knew better than I what you'd gone through and I wanted you to stop fighting and let me fight for you.I wanted you to play,like a child—for you were a child,a brave,frightened,bull-headed child.I think you are still a child.No one but a child could be so headstrong and so insensitive.”
His voice was calm and tired but there was something in the quality of it that raised a ghost of memory in Scarlett.She had heard a voice like this once before and at some other crisis of her life.Where had it been?The voice of a man facing himself and his world without feeling,without flinching,without hope.
Why—why—it had been Ashley in the wintry,windswept orchard at Tara,talking of life and shadow shows with a tired calmness that had more finality in its timbre than any desperate bitterness could have revealed.Even as Ashley's voice then had turned her cold with dread of things she could not understand,so now Rhett's words made her heart sink.His voice,his manner,more than the content of his words,disturbed her,made her realize that her pleasurable excitement of a few moments ago had been untimely.Something was wrong,badly wrong.What it was she did not know but she listened desperately,her eyes on his brown face,hoping to hear words that would dissipate her fears.
“It was so obvious that we were meant for each other.So obvious that I was the only man of your acquaintance who could love you after knowing you as you really are—hard and greedy and unscrupulous,like me.I loved you and I took the chance.I thought Ashley would fade out of your mind.But,”he shrugged,“I tried everything I knew and nothing worked.And I loved you so,Scarlett.If you had only let me,I could have loved you as gently and as tenderly as ever a man loved a woman.But I couldn't let you know,for I knew you'd think me weak and try to use my love against me.And always—always there was Ashley.It drove me crazy.I couldn't sit across the table from you every night,knowing you wished Ashley was sitting there in my place.And I couldn't hold you in my arms at night and know that—well,it doesn't matter now.I wonder,now,why it hurt.That's what drove me to Belle.There is a certain swinish comfort in being with a woman who loves you utterly and respects you for being a fine gentleman—even if she is an illiterate whore.It soothed my vanity.You've never been very soothing,my dear.”
“Oh,Rhett ...”she began,miserable at the very mention of Belle's name,but he waved her to silence and went on.
“And then,that night when I carried you upstairs—I thought—I hoped—I hoped so much I was afraid to face you the next morning,for fear I'd been mistaken and you didn't love me.I was so afraid you'd laugh at me I went off and got drunk.And when I came back,I was shaking in my boots and if you had come even halfway to meet me,had given me some sign,I think I'd have kissed your feet.But you didn't.”
“Oh,but Rhett,I did want you then but you were so nasty!I did want you!I think—yes,that must have been when I first knew I cared about you.Ashley—I never was happy about Ashley after that,but you were so nasty that I—”
“Oh,well,”he said.“It seems we've been at cross purposes,doesn't it?But it doesn't matter now.I'm only telling you,so you won't ever wonder about it all.When you were sick and it was my fault,I stood outside your door,hoping you'd call for me,but you didn't,and then I knew what a fool I'd been and that it was all over.”
He stopped and looked through her and beyond her,even as Ashley had often done,seeing something she could not see.And she could only stare speechless at his brooding face.
“But then,there was Bonnie and I saw that everything wasn't over,after all.I liked to think that Bonnie was you,a little girl again,before the war and poverty had done things to you.She was so like you,so willful,so brave and gay and full of high spirits,and I could pet her and spoil her—just as I wanted to pet you.But she wasn't like you—she loved me.It was a blessing that I could take the love you didn't want and give it to her....When she went,she took everything.”
Suddenly she was sorry for him,sorry with a completeness that wiped out her own grief and her fear of what his words might mean.It was the first time in her life she had ever been sorry for anyone without feeling contemptuous as well,because it was the first time she had ever approached understanding any other human being.And she could understand his shrewd caginess,so like her own,his obstinate pride that kept him from admitting his love for fear of a rebuff.
“Ah,darling,”she said coming forward,hoping he would put out his arms and draw her to his knees.“Darling,I'm so sorry but I'll make it all up to you!We can be so happy,now that we know the truth and—Rhett—look at me,Rhett!There—there can be other babies—not like Bonnie but—”
“Thank you,no,”said Rhett,as if he were refusing a piece of bread.“I'll not risk my heart a third time.”
“Rhett,don't say such things!Oh,what can I say to make you understand?I've told you how sorry I am—”
“My darling,you're such a child.You think that by saying,‘I'm sorry,'all the errors and hurts of years past can be remedied,obliterated from the mind,all the poison drawn from old wounds....Take my handkerchief,Scarlett.Never,at any crisis of your life,have I known you to have a handkerchief.”
