第263章

“But you miss the point, my pet. They aren’t successful and so they aren’t affronting the hot Southern pride of their men folks. The men can still say, ‘Poor sweet sillies, how hard they try! Well, I’ll let them think they’re helping.’ And besides, the ladies you mentioned don’t enjoy having to work. They let it be known that they are only doing it until some man conies along to relieve them of their unwomanly burdens. And so everybody feels sorry for them. But obviously you do like to work and obviously you aren’t going to let any man tend to your business for you, and so no one can feel sorry for you. And Atlanta is never going to forgive you for that. It’s so pleasant to feel sorry for people.”

“I wish you’d be serious, sometimes.”

“Did you ever hear the Oriental proverb: The dogs bark but the caravan passes on?” Let them bark, Scarlett. I fear nothing will stop your caravan.”

“But why should they mind my making a little money?”

“You can’t have everything, Scarlett. You can either make money in your present unladylike manner and meet cold shoulders everywhere you go, or you can be poor and genteel and have lots of friends. You’ve made your choice.”

“I won’t be poor,” she said swiftly. “But—it is the right choice, isn’t it?”

“If it’s money you want most.”

“Yes, I want money more than anything else in the world.”

“Then you’ve made the only choice. But there’s a penalty attached, as there is to most things you want. It’s loneliness.”

That silenced her for a moment. It was true. When she stopped to think about it, she was a little lonely—lonely for feminine companionship. During the war years she had had Ellen to visit when she felt blue. And since Ellen’s death, there had always been Melanie, though she and Melanie had nothing in common except the hard work at Tara. Now there was no one, for Aunt Pitty had no conception of life beyond her small round of gossip.

“I think—I think,” she began hesitantly, “that I’ve always been lonely where women were concerned. It isn’t just my working that makes Atlanta ladies dislike me. They just don’t like me anyway. No woman ever really liked me, except Mother. Even my sisters. I don’t know why, but even before the war, even before I married Charlie, ladies didn’t seem to approve of anything I did—”

“You forget Mrs. Wilkes,” said Rhett and his eyes gleamed maliciously. “She has always approved of you up to the hilt. I daresay she’d approve of anything you did, short of murder.”

Scarlett thought grimly: “She’s even approved of murder,” and she laughed contemptuously.

“Oh, Melly!” she said, and then, ruefully: “It’s certainly not to my credit that Melly is the only woman who approves of me, for she hasn’t the sense of a guinea hen. If she had any sense—” She stopped in some confusion.

“If she had any sense, she’d realize a few things and she couldn’t approve,” Rhett finished. “Well, you know more about that than I do, of course.”

“Oh, damn your memory and your bad manners!”

“I’ll pass over your unjustified rudeness with the silence it deserves and return to our former subject. Make up your mind to this. If you are different; you are isolated, not only from people of your own age but from those of your parents’ generation and from your children’s generation too. They’ll never understand you and they’ll be shocked no matter what you do. But your grandparents would probably be proud of you and say: ‘There’s a chip off the old block,’ and your grandchildren will sigh enviously and say: ‘What an old rip Grandma must have been!’ and they’ll try to be like you.”

Scarlett laughed with amusement.

“Sometimes you do hit on the truth! Now there was my Grandma Robillard. Mammy used to hold her over my head whenever I was naughty. Grandma was as cold as an icicle and strict about her manners and everybody else’s manners, but she married three times and had any number of duels fought over her and she wore rouge and the most shockingly low-cut dresses and no—well, er—not much under her dresses.”

“And you admired her tremendously, for all that you tried to be like your mother! I had a grandfather on the Butler side who was a pirate.”

“Not really! A walk-the-plank kind?”

“I daresay he made people walk the plank if there was any money to be made that way. At any rate, he made enough money to leave my father quite wealthy. But the family always referred to him carefully as a ‘sea captain.’ He was killed in a saloon brawl long before I was born. His death was, needless to say, a great relief to his children, for the old gentleman was drunk most of the time and when in his cups was apt to forget that he was a retired sea captain and give reminiscences that curled his children’s hair. However, I admired him and tried to copy him far more than I ever did my father, for Father is an amiable gentleman full of honorable habits and pious saws—so you see how it goes. I’m sure your children won’t approve of you, Scarlett, any more than Mrs. Merriwether and Mrs. Elsing and their broods approve of you now. Your children will probably be soft, prissy creatures, as the children of hard-bitten characters usually are. And to make them worse, you, like every other mother, are probably determined that they shall never know the hardships you’ve known. And that’s all wrong. Hardships make or break people. So you’ll have to wait for approval from your grandchildren.”

“I wonder what our grandchildren will be like!”

“Are you suggesting by that ‘our’ that you and I will have mutual grandchildren? Fie, Mrs. Kennedy!”

Scarlett, suddenly conscious of her error of speech, went red. It was more than his joking words that shamed her, for she was suddenly aware again of her thickening body. In no way had either of them ever hinted at her condition and she had always kept the lap robe high under her armpits when with him, even on warm days, comforting herself in the usual feminine manner with the belief that she did not show at all when thus covered, and she was suddenly sick with quick rage at her own condition and shame that he should know.