At Taz's suggestion, they dined at Antoine's, where the waiters fussed over Mr. Watling's mother and Captain Butler's little girl. Belle said it was the happiest day of her life.
The next day, they took a train to Baton Rouge to meet Tazewell's Watling's partner. While Rhett, Taz, and J. Nicolet discussed common acquaintances, Belle, Prissy, and Bonnie walked along the bayou, where Prissy was scared half out of her wits when a harmless-looking log turned into an alligator.
In Baton Rouge, they ate at a fisherman's café. Bonnie loved the boudin but shuddered at the langoustine. "It's a big spider!" Bonnie insisted.
Back in New Orleans, they attended the races and saw The Marriage of Figaro at the French Opera House. One entire morning, Rhett and Bonnie rode uptown and downtown on the street railway because that's what Bonnie wanted.
Bonnie lifted her little face to his and said, "I wish Mother was here.”
Rhett's eyes were so sad. "Yes, sugar. I wish she was, too.”
The rains that happy week were tropical rains, which cooled the earth and disappeared into mist as they fell.
Rhett forgot his promise to take his daughter on a steamboat ride. He would regret that unkept promise for the rest of his days.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Miss Melly Asks for Help
A year and a month after Rhett and Bonnie visited New Orleans, Melanie Wilkes wrote her friend:
Dearest Rosemary,
I trust this finds you in good health and spirits. Do you like teaching at the Female Seminary? Rosemary, how can two stick-in-the-muds like us have become such dear friends? Dr. Meade is outside my door issuing instructions to Pittypat. The good doctor leaves me with admonitions and an array of varicolored potions and pills! When men can fix something they fix it. When the repair is beyond them, they harrumph and dither!
Although Dr. Meade blames me for the fix I'm in — I can see reproach in his eyes — he cannot decently utter them. Would any man presume to tell a wife she should have refused her husbands embraces? He is less forbearing with Ashley, and my guilty husband avoids him.
When Dr. Meade manages to ambush Ashley, my husband comes to my room so contrite, I must lift his spirits. Falsely cheerful wife and contrite husband: What geese we are!
Dr. Meade blames Ashley for my pregnancy. Ashley is a gentleman and no gentleman could admit that his mousy, sickly wife has been a Salome whose allures the helpless male could not resist.
Yet, Dear Friend, I confess that unlikely tale is the Truth, that this plain girl can, when needs must, be a Salome of the first order!
A year ago in April, Scarlett and Ashley gave way — only for a moment — to the impulse that had smoldered in them for so many years.
Ashley's sister India, Archie Flytte, and old Mrs. Elsing — Atlanta's prime busybody — caught them in an embrace. Naturally, India raced to me with their news — and on Ashley's birthday, too, with our house prepared to receive guests and Japanese lanterns glowing fetchingly in our garden.
Dear Rosemary, where it comes to my family, I am a mother tiger, and I understood perfectly, as India gleefully delivered her news, that I might undo two marriages, my own and your brother Rhett's. India's face positively glowed with malicious satisfaction. She has always hated Scarlett.
I thought to myself, India, you are Ashley's sister. Why can't you see this must destroy the brother you love as thoroughly as the woman you despise? So I pronounced India a liar. I said that my husband Ashley, and my dear friend Scarlett would never betray me. I ordered India from my house.
When Archie Flytte corroborated India's tale, I expelled him, too. Subsequently, Archie has uttered the vilest threats — not against me — against Scarlett and Rhett! I fear they have a bad enemy there.
When my guilty Ashley returned home, I never gave the poor man a chance to make excuses, but met him with an embrace which I trust was more ardent and familiar than Scarlett's!
Ashley desperately wanted to confess. His lips trembled with yearning. I stayed his confession with a kiss.
Honesty is a blunt tooclass="underline" pruning shears when sewing scissors are what's wanted! I could not let my husband confess because I could not grant him absolution!
Scarlett and Rhett arrived after Ashley's party was well under way.
(I've no doubt your brother made Scarlett "face the music. ") At our front door, I took my dear friend's faithless arm and smiled at her for all the world to see.
Our guests that night included prominent men, a few so prominent (and distracted), nobody'd told them about Ashley’s fall from grace. Generous spirits accepted my faith in my husband and my friend Cynics thought me a booby and snickered covertly.
But scandal was stopped dead at my reputation.
That night, after our guests went home, Ashley proved in the most primitive, convincing fashion that he was mine and mine alone.
Ashley and Melly Wilkes were like newlyweds. We conversed about books and art and music — never a word about politics or commerce — but our nights were so voluptuous, I blush to remember them! We never discussed what might come of our concupiscence. Perhaps we dreamed that after Beau's difficult delivery, I could not conceive again.
Since I cannot believe God can be heartless, I must believe He knows best, and so I am come to childbed.
If I survive, it is God's will. If I do not, I pray my baby will live. She is so clever and vigorous, and she so wants to live. I say "she" because I am already close to her, closer than I could be to any male child. I confide in her.
I have told her how her father was shaped for a finer world than the rough-and- tumble one we inhabit. I urge my daughter to make her world one where gentle souls like Ashley may live in honor and peace.
Rosemary, it must be possible! We born in the nineteenth century stand at the gates of Paradise, where there will be no more wars and everyone will be happy and good!
What will my daughter know of our world? If life before the War seems remote to me, how will it seem to her? Will we Confederates become sentimental ghosts? Our passions, confusions, and desires reduced to a distant idyll of faithful darkies, white columned plantations, handsome Masters and Mistresses whose manners are as impeccable as their clothing? Oh Rosemary, our lives have been severed into a "before" that grows more remote daily and a "now" that is so modern, the paint hasn't yet dried.
I am so ungrateful! The sun shines outside my window and I hear the shouts of children playing while I indulge these melancholy fantasies.
Dearest Rosemary, I have skirted the true purpose of my letter. You must come to Atlanta.
I am sensible of your responsibilities to your school but beg you to think of your brother. When Bonnie Blue was killed, I feared for Rhett's sanity.
It might so easily have been different. Little Bonnie mightn't have urged her reluctant pony to jump those hurdles. The pony might not have stumbled. Children fall from horses every day. Some of brother Charles's falls left Aunt Pittypat gasping. Most children do not die by falling from ponies.