It is a truth universally acknowledged that no one but a child could guilelessly believe that all the errors of the past would be remedied and obliterated from the mind by simply saying, "I'm sorry." And since he was way past his childhood years and none too guileless for that, Rhett naturally decided that resorting to those three words to placate his wife's wrath would only prove a futile, if not altogether harmful endeavor.
But then again, why would he need apologies when he could use something consistently better, something that would express regret and peaceful intentions with the eloquence of a hundred words—and about as many pounds sterling? Something that would make Scarlett's grudges fly away at an average speed of 10 miles per hour, and all without the danger of heartbreak, neck break or any other mishaps?
We proudly present to you Rhett Butler's official solution for matrimonial crises: the Rover 1885 safety bicycle.
The idea for such an acquisition originated in a Sunday stroll the Butlers took in the Battersea Park, which incidentally happened to also be the place of choice for the high-society cyclists of London to exercise their skills. As a herd of twittering, colorfully-attired women on wheels passed by them, Rhett was just preparing a witty remark on the return of the amazons in modern society, when he stopped, suddenly alerted of his wife's change of mood by the involuntary squeeze she gave his arm. She didn't say anything but her green eyes were shining with obvious interest, in a way he had come to miss over the last weeks.
After that momentous, comical night, Scarlett had ceased her cosmetic antics altogether. She had been cross with her husband for more than a week, one of the longest fights they had gotten into after their reconciliation all those years ago. And, when he finally managed to pacify her, he discovered with a certain amount of unease that they had yet to revert entirely to the situation of before. It was hard to put a finger on the cause, but Scarlett was somehow different. She was more subdued; she was quiet in a disturbing way, and all his efforts of cheering her up amounted to nothing.
In typical Rhett Butler style, he then decided that the only thing crushing his wife's spirit was the weight of her reputation and the best way of helping her would be by doing his best to once again relieve her of that burden. He wanted her to experience the thrill of shunning convention anew, to raise her chin defiantly at the world—well, the world minus himself, if possible. So, since Scarlett seemed to show interest in the cycling fever that had spread among London's feminine elite, and women cyclists were still largely frowned upon, Rhett decided this was the perfect opportunity to present his wife with a gift.
In retrospect, he was firmly convinced giving Scarlett strychnine and permission to fix his morning coffee would have brought him far less trouble than buying her a bicycle did. To begin with, he had had to survive through the long, torturous days of her learning to ride the contraption, days filled with all sort of minor accidents and collisions. Scarlett herself came through unscathed, for it was after all a safety bicycle that she was riding, but her husband's shin, wallet—as a long row of sweepers had been bruised by Mrs. Butler and bribed by Mr. Butler those days—and toes suffered a great deal.
When Scarlett finally accomplished the monumental task and was able to pedal gracefully for extended periods of time, Rhett was ready to thank God on bended knee. It was a good thing he abstained from that though, going for a cigar and smiling approvingly at his wife from the distance instead, because he would soon come to recognize the bicycle as God's retribution for all his past misdeeds.
It had been during one of these rides in the Battersea Park that Scarlett met Miss Neilsen for the first time. And it had been Miss Neilsen—an old maid with the brain of a bird and the voice of a Stentor, as Rhett gracefully described her—that had introduced Scarlett to the Rational Dress Association.
The said Association, functioning at first as the Rational Dress Society, had been formed almost four years before by two resourceful ladies: Mrs. King, who would also serve as the perpetual secretary, and Lady Harberton, the leading force and president. Their declared goal had been to bring the light of reason into women's fashion, an enterprise from which less courageous beings would have undoubtedly shrank.
But not only that the lady founders were naturally courageous, they also had a strategic advantage previous generations had lacked: the sudden importance that was being placed on healthy exercise, and especially on cycling. In light of this, they started their campaign, protesting against the wearing of tight corsets, of high-heeled shoes, of heavy skirts—since those rendered cycling almost impossible—and of all tie-down cloaks or other garments hindering the movements of the arms. It was because of all these frivolous trappings that women couldn't enjoy the benefits of sports; it was because of these fripperies that they were sharing the dull fate of statues. These had to be abolished if women were to conquer their freedom.
Scarlett, who thrived in all these women rejected, was far from having the dress reform in mind when she let Miss Neilsen convince her to attend a meeting. She first went to a tea party of the Association driven by the desire to meet some of the richest and most distinguished women of London, women that she vaguely understood would have had enough reasons to snub her.
And they had all welcomed her with open arms. After all, Scarlett was coming from the country of Elizabeth Stanton and Amelia Bloomer, even though she seemed strangely unfamiliar with those names, and only shrugged dismissively—"Yankees!"—at hearing that the two ladies, initiators of a similar movement in the 50s, were from New York. But those were just the peculiarities of the Americans; they wouldn't hold something like that against the poor girl.
However, it hadn't been this wave of unanimous sympathy what made the charming American return to the meetings of the Association. It had been the Viscountess' fascinating personality. At age 42, Florence, Lady Harberton was the kind of woman that inspired respect, without inspiring fear—an extremely rare trait and one that made her very suitable as mentor of young malleable minds. And, though Scarlett's mind didn't exactly meet either of those standards, Lady Harberton exercised a certain fascination over her from their very first encounter. She couldn't quite explain her feeling, but it was like seeing the grace of her mother again—Ellen that had never reached this age—only coupled with the sort of overt energy she had always admired in herself and a handful of other women.
And besides, she and Lady Harberton saw eye to eye in at least one essential matter. The Viscountess was convinced that the world was wrong—it had to be since it was ruled by men. Scarlett herself saw little inconvenience in men ruling—or telling themselves that they were ruling—but she candidly subscribed to the idea that she was living in one of the worst possible worlds. Any world that allowed such great an injustice as Scarlett O'Hara turning 40 had to be utterly and rottenly wrong. A friendship more solid than one stemming from agreement on the structure of the universe could hardly be imagined.
And so Scarlett continued to frequent the society of these progressive women much to her husband's amusement. At this point, he was watching her actions with the superior smile one would watch the heedless gambols of a child. But there was a palpable tension lingering in the air, the sort of silent wait that announces the impending break of a storm.
And it wasn't long before Rhett saw himself face to face with that storm.
"Trousers? You want to wear trousers?" he asked, with one eyebrow raised in amused disbelief.
"Oh, these are not trousers, Rhett! This is what is called a dual skirt," she said pointing at the garment she had borrowed from Mrs. King to show to her husband.
Dual skirts, or bifurcated garments as they were advertised, were the Association's solution to the problems that cycling posed to women. Pedaling in long, heavy skirts was not the easiest task in the world, and accidents—ranging from passers-by glimpsing at one's underclothes to major injuries and even death—were quite frequent. The dual skirts, which could just as well be described as loose trousers, as the opponents pointed out, offered the semblance of a skirt when the owner was standing, but the comfort of trousers when riding the bicycle. Why stop at one, when you can have them both?
"Let us not argue semantics now," he shrugged. It was a surprising decision coming from Scarlet. He had always believed that if Heaven didn't come with a wardrobe bursting with stylish dresses, his wife would most probably turn down the offer of a celestial afterlife. But then again, one could always count on Scarlett to have sudden, extreme shifts in her affections—so maybe that was the case here as well. He decided the best course of action would be to abide by her foolish plan and see where it would lead.
"So how should we proceed with this new fashion statement of yours?"
"What do you mean how 'should we proceed'?"
"Well," he started good-humoredly, "am I supposed to take you along the next time I visit my tailor? 'Henry, I need you to make a suit for myself and a pair of trousers for my lovely wife here'?"
"Don't be ridiculous, of course I won't go to your tailor," his lovely, sarcasm-impaired wife answered. "There are plenty of good seamstresses in this city willing to do it. Mrs. King recommended a Mrs. Beck from Hyde Park Street to me. She sews for most of the ladies in the Association so I suppose she's the best."
Mrs. Beck was indeed the best and soon Scarlett owned a large variety of bifurcated garments, ranging from slim skirts with narrow box pleats all around them to wide skirts with pleats carried up nearly to the waist. She had long coats and loose jackets that didn't require tightlacing, just as the divided skirts didn't require petticoats, since one of the major points in the movement's agenda was to reduce the weight of the underclothes to a maximum of seven pounds—"Something both myself and my old knees wholeheartedly subscribe to," Rhett had said.
But that approval didn't spell the end of all his problems, as he might have hoped. Because if the ladies in the Association had another favorite target for their disdain, that had to be the idea of patriarchy. James Pomeroy, the 6th Viscount of Harberton, was an understanding, docile husband, but it was obvious that not all women were that lucky, and Mrs. Butler was a prime example of that. And, the poor girl, she wasn't even aware of her cruel fate.
Because while Rhett Butler was the epitome of all that had ever gone wrong with a man, Scarlett seemed quite taken with him. Not only that the man had a much higher opinion of himself than any objective measurement of reality would have justified, but his wife, for all she wouldn't admit it in front of him, shared that belief. It was quite appalling, and in any case most indecorous, how she would say at random times, "My husband says that," "Rhett said the same thing" or any other absurd reminder of how her husband simply didn't allow her to have an opinion. At first they only shook their heads and secretly referred to him as the tyrant, but then they took to the task of gently reforming his wife. There was no reason to let him mock her, belittle her or try to tell her what to do, and there sure as hell was no reason to let him interfere in her wardrobe.
So those were in short the reasons Rhett was standing in front of the Harberton house on Cromwell Road that day. And it was at least the third week in a row he had been doing that. If the feminists were waging a small war against Rhett Butler, then they were winning battle after battle. Scarlett was alternating these days between giving him the cold shoulder and recounting enthusiastically everything her new idol, Lady Harberton, had done or said. He didn't despair though. An all-women association was not something that could hold his wife's attention for long and, besides, many of her new acquaintances were regular bluestockings. What common ground could Scarlett find with them? No, all he had to do was wait patiently, and she will get tired of them—or them of her, whichever came first—the bicycle would fly right under the wheels of a carriage, without his wife on it, and order in the universe would be restored once more.
The massive oak door finally opened and Scarlett appeared, her expressive face wearing an obvious look of relief at seeing him. Could this be the day he had been waiting for all these weeks? She descended the stairs, her rapid motions that regular dresses would have disguised obvious in the disrupted lines of her dual skirt. Normally, the pleated bands would have looked like a single flounce at the hemline, making it difficult to tell the difference from normal skirts, but apparently the garment was not designed to hide Scarlett's energy.
He abandoned his position by the gaslight pole and stepped forward to meet her, already convinced by the fierce light in her eyes that this was it. His wife's involvement in the Rational Dress Movement had come to its timely end.
"Madame, your humble servant at your service. Allow me to—"
"Oh, stop this nonsense and let's go," Scarlett cut him off abruptly. "I don't want to spend another second here. You didn't come with a carriage, did you now?" she looked briskly around for any vehicles. "So much the better, we'll walk on foot."
"And the bicycle?" he inquired with a barely concealed smile, already suspecting the answer.
"Oh, forget about the bicycle. I don't want to see it again. It's the worst bore in my life. I don't know what possessed you to buy it. Send someone later to pick it up and we can sell it or otherwise get rid of it," she added, in light of the pecuniary loss simply abandoning the bicycle would have brought.
He bowed slightly, while his mind was assessing how many glasses of brandy would make an appropriate celebration for finally slaying the two-wheeled monster. "To the hotel?"
"No," his wife shook her head energetically, "no, I can't stand the hotel now. Let's go somewhere, let's take a stroll or—I don't know—just do something else."
Rhett offered his arm and they started slowly up Queen's Gate towards the park. It was quite a long distance, and they walked in silence. Scarlett's rage was subsiding; he could feel it in the way her initially brisk gait had lost its momentum. As they were about to enter the Kensington Gardens, he finally ventured the question, looking at her from the corner of his eye.
"So what did they do wrong?"
"Who did what wrong?" she answered absent-mindedly.
"Your friends from the Association. They must have done something wrong since yesterday you were praising them to high heavens and now you are only happy to get away."
"Oh," she dismissed his question with a small wave of hand, "they didn't do anything. I am just a bit weary of them, that's all."
"Is that so? And how did this weariness insinuate itself?" he carried on, mercilessly. "It must have been building up for some time then, this dissatisfaction; their actions must have grown quite tiresome for you; you must have found yourself in disagreement with some of their most cherished principles."
"So is that how it happened, Scarlett?" he inquired after a small pause, his face the picture of ingenuous interest.
"I don't know. It's just that they treat me like I'm—like I'm a child or something—like I'm one of their projects. Lady Harberton wants me to change my manners, my accent—"
"Your husband," he supplied, as he stepped aside, letting her sit down first.
She ignored his quip, as she sat down and removed her hat, placing it beside her on the bench. "And on top of that," she continued, "they can't at least show the decency not to talk about improper subjects."
"Improper subjects?" Rhett raised an eyebrow. "Don't tell me they offended your sensitive nature. I'm afraid I'm going to have to prove my gentlemanly virtues and challenge Lady Harberton to a duel then, to defend my wife's honor. I will not shoot on anyone wearing a skirt—but trousers, now that's an entirely different matter…"
At her slight frowning, he continued in a placatory tone. "So, tell me now, what outrageous things did you have to endure from your warrior friends?"
She glared at him. "Never you mind. I'm simply not going back to any meetings again and that's the end of it. All you need to know."
"Scarlett, don't be a child, if you started telling me the story, why not get it all out? It would make you feel better."
But his encouragement was really unnecessary, since Scarlett was barely containing her indignation and needed little incentive to start pouring it in words.
"Well, they were always talking nonsense anyway, but now they started having this awful conversation about how—how it benefits a woman to grow older and—"
So that was the real problem, she had been reminded of her birthday. He had imagined many scenarios for this moment, but he hadn't expected this ironic turn of events. Of course, when you spend time with someone in order to forget, you don't take it lightly when they—deliberately or not—twist the knife into your wound.
"As if this day wasn't bad enough already, they had to carry on with their stupid opinions about how—how old, " the very word seemed to evoke a physical pain, "women are so much happier."
"Now, wait a second, did they know that today is your birthday?"
It surprised him, because it was a date Scarlett never mentioned to anyone. He'd actually had to extract the precious information from Mammy. If Scarlett had been given discretionary powers over a small country, it was very likely that this day would have been erased from the calendars or, if not, celebrated with the sobriety otherwise reserved for the Good Friday. Rhett himself knew better than to openly remind his wife of it before making sure that at least half a dozen gifts and a bottle of champagne were standing between him and her bad mood.
"No, they did not. They were talking about her ladyship's upcoming 43rd birthday and they—they started joking about it," she emphasized the words, as if they were the most outrageous things ever heard. "And Lady Harberton herself said she's only glad that she's now over 40, so she doesn't have to worry about what she's wearing anymore. Because now no one will pay her a second look when she walks by anyway. I swear, that's exactly what she said," she looked up at him, as if expecting to see her look of indignation reflected in his eyes.
Instead, a small satisfied light flickered in his pupils, before being replaced by the most passive, sympathetic look Rhett Butler could summon. This was the moment. It had taken him too long to realize what was wrong with his wife, but now he finally had the chance of remedying that situation.
"So, naturally, you were appalled by that idea."
"Of course, I was, wouldn't you have been?" He chose to ignore her candid question so she shrugged and continued. "And then she went as far as to say her 40th birthday was the best day of her life because of that. I simply cannot understand it." Of course you can't, it's irony.
"Go on," he said instead.
"How can anyone say anything like that? When it's the worst day of my life," her voice started to take on a strained note, "when it's actually the—the very end of my life—"
"Now, I wouldn't go that far. You seem quite healthy, the odds of you saluting saint Peter soon are quite slim."
"Oh, you know what I mean!" she cried.
"Of course, I do. You are afraid that you are getting old and—"
"I'm not afraid that I'm getting old. I am old. Starting with today I am," she declared dejectedly.
"First of all," he started patiently, "you are not old. And secondly, if you were it wouldn't be starting from today. If you're old now, then it's obvious you must have been old for some time."
She huffed, all memory of how she had proclaimed her advanced age minutes ago lost in the indignation his words had brought.
"Don't get your feathers ruffled, Scarlett. What I meant was that you are in no way different than you were twenty or forty hours ago. There is no point in turning a simple day into a tragedy. And, frankly, I don't recall ever seeing a person placing that much emphasis on their birthday. No wise person would—I wouldn't," he offered in the most natural transition.
"Oh, really," she started with a flicker of malicious interest, "so what did you do when you turned forty?"
"Oh, well, er…"
In truth, he remembered that time with extreme clarity—he was thirty-nine when he proposed to Scarlett, and that was one of the most thrilling times of his life—standing on the precipice of his old life, looking into the unknown. His 40th birthday occurred during their "extended" engagement. He spent it in Charleston, with his mother, brother and sister—the first birthday he'd spent at home in a long time (39, for example, he spent with a charming girl in Havana who bore more than a passing resemblance to Scarlett)—but now that dear old Butler senior had gone to his Holy Maker, Rhett's mother insisted he celebrate the landmark occasion with family.
A conversation on that day had led to some rather embarrassing behavior on his part, things that he would rather not admit at this later date…
"I cannot believe that forty years ago today you were brought into the world, Rhett…it seems like only yesterday."
They were in the parlor of the modest brick house he'd bought them after the War—Rosemary smiled gaily, Ross sourly—his colorless wife, Molly, at this side, timid and quiet as always. The party was a quiet, simple affair, as he'd requested—only family members, though Rhett really did wonder why his seething little brother even bothered attending a celebration he so obviously disdained. Seeing Ross and his wife, Rhett couldn't help smiling in blatant self-satisfaction at the thought of his own intended—for, while Molly faded into the background at any given social function, Scarlett shined brightest of the lot, a glittering emerald in a sea of mediocre semiprecious stones.
And soon she would be his, all his.
"…I'm only sorry your poor father didn't live to see this day," he heard his mother saying, with less enthusiasm than her previous statement.
His good mood was immediately soured as his father's face replaced Scarlett's in his mind's eye. Scowling, he tried to banish the image of the stern countenance by deriding its significance.
"No doubt he would have been surprised I even made it to forty," Rhett did not try to conceal the bitter tone in his voice.
"That's not true, Rhett," Ross threw in, and before he had even started voicing his thought aloud everyone in the room knew it would be inflammatory. "Father always said you had the 'devil himself in you'—I think he thought you'd never die." The words were clearly said with malicious intent, but Rhett let his younger brother's jab roll off his back with finesse.
"So much the worse for him," he quipped back, cynically. "'The devil in me'?" He snorted. "Did he read that, or was it original? I never knew the old man had even a streak of the poet in him—"
"Rhett, don't speak ill of the dead." His mother cut off what no doubt would have been some further cutting remarks made by her eldest son as well as an impending argument between the two boys. In a lighter tone, she continued, "At any rate, I wish he had lived at least long enough to see you settle down—I declare, we all thought you'd never marry. Whatever took you so long, Rhett?"
She wasn't exaggerating—the entire family had written him off as a hopeless case long ago. She lived in perpetual fear of never having a grandchild.
"Well," he answered, glibly, "The right girl kept marrying the wrong men, Mama, you can't blame me for that." If they knew all the details they could, but he was determined to honor Scarlett's request and keep their engagement a secret—or at least, in the case of his family, keep her identity a secret.
"There you go again, Rhett, saying strange things and never giving me any hints about who my future daughter-in-law is! At least give me a little inkling—"
"She's a fairly close relation of two of your friends, is that a good enough hint for you, Mother?" he asked, amused at his mother's enthusiastic support of his nuptials. Mrs. Butler was suspicious of Rhett's never-ending string of visits to Atlanta, suspecting there was more to it than met the eye. When he bounced into Charleston with the news that a girl was taking his name, she was ecstatic. She hoped to meet the woman her son was so obviously taken with.
"What do you mean she kept marrying the wrong men, Rhett?" Rosemary asked, curiously.
"Well, little sister, I mean quite plainly—" What a laugh, he was never plain. "—That my dear fiancée has been widowed twice. Her last husband, quite recently—hence the secrecy in our engagement."
"You never struck me as the sort to go for a woman who another man's already claimed, let alone two other men," Ross interjected, crudely. Rhett for the first time felt a real stab of annoyance at his brother's insults—in large part because there was actual truth in them. He was a very possessive man, generally—what was his was his, and he wanted people to know it. The knowledge that another man had so much as touched Scarlett before him infuriated Rhett.
Though in the wake of how Ashley Wilkes had touched her heart first, less than one would think.
"Well, this woman is worth it, little brother," he shot back, acidly, giving Molly a rather unnecessary cruel once-over. "Some women, believe it or not, are." Ross's wife looked down at her lap, and Ross turned red in anger at the obvious slight.
Their mother was too busy going over all of her friends in a desperate attempt to figure out who the mysterious fiancée was to notice this exchange. Rosemary was used to the brothers' squabbles and pointedly ignored it.
"If she's been widowed twice, she can't be a spring chicken anymore, can she, Rhett?" Ross asked, smarmily, possessing only a shadow of his brother's suave charm. "How old is she? Surely you can tell us that much."
Rhett found his hackles rising at the insult, even if it was directed more at him than the woman he loved.
"Well, we all here know that it's rude to ask a lady her age," he said, tersely. "But by my calculations she's no older than twenty-five and no younger than twenty-two." Ross's face didn't fall at the words, instead his eyes brightened in petty glee at the news. He decided to take the opposite tract than his intended abuse.
"Why, she's just a girl, Rhett, young enough to be your daughter!" Ross laughed, and for once Rhett could not think of a quick retort. "And you're on the other side of forty now. Hopefully the girl isn't a—er, black widow, is that what they call 'em?"
He grimaced but did not answer, as his mother diffused the moment by chattering on about every single one of her friends and their relations in the hopes that he would reveal Scarlett's name.
For some reason, Ross's parting shot stuck in his head for a long time afterward.
He knew he was older than Scarlett, considerably older—and far more mature. He'd always known that. He'd never taken the time to consider in relative terms just how much older he was.
He was forty now. Scarlett was probably twenty-three or four. Ross was right—he was old enough to be Scarlett's father.
The day he'd proposed, he claimed himself the proper age to be Scarlett's husband—not a boy like Charles Hamilton, or an old spinster of a man like Frank Kennedy—but 'the right age', young and capable of showing her a good time—virile too, or he'd implied as much.
How right had he been to make the claim that he was young?
He was forty now.
Forty was 'old' for a woman, not a man, he reasoned. Forty was the prime of life for a man—young enough to do, wise enough to think better. Men older than him married younger than Scarlett every day. Forty was perfectly fine for a man to marry at.
Forty was middle-aged.
And Scarlett was so young, despite her silly vain claims that she was getting wrinkles from having to listen to Ella and Wade and Pitty whine at her all the time. She was barely on the other side of twenty, at least fifteen years younger than him, probably more. He found himself staring in the mirror more than usual in the days following his birthday party, looking for crow's feet and—humiliation beyond the pale—searching his black head desperately for gray hairs.
He found nine. This was very disconcerting.
Images of himself, exaggerated images, flooded his mind as the weeks dragged on…his back hunched over, head snow white with a beard to rival Father Time's, only one or two teeth remaining, sitting in a rocking chair, stone deaf, while a still young and vibrant Scarlett sat across the room, wearing the ridiculous engagement ring he'd given her and surrounded by young, handsome and able-bodied suitors (all of which were Ashley Wilkes doubles)—in these nightmarish imaginings Scarlett would pat him, her old fool of a husband, on the back in a condescending manner, and say things to the other men like, "Poor dear, he hasn't been able to walk since he turned forty-five…" or, "From what the doctor tells me, I'll be able to marry one of you nice young fellows soon. He hasn't long for this world, you know." Then she would smile evilly and prance away while his unnaturally old self would fall asleep in the rocking chair pathetically and drool.
As completely ludicrous as the idea of it was, Rhett let it get to him.
He read some periodical article which suggested that smoking cigars aged men. He threw away his gold cigar case at once, despite having smoked them his entire adult life.
The next time he went to visit his little darling in Atlanta, though, he exhibited his most insane behavior.
He pulled up to Pittypat's house in his brand new carriage.
His brand new carriage painted bright, fire engine…red.
"Well, what do you think, my sweet?" He called from the rig to Scarlett, gaping on the porch. "Slick, isn't it?" Actually, it was the most ridiculous-looking thing he'd ever had the misfortune to drive—it looked like the sort of rig a ten-year-old boy with an unlimited allowance would pick for himself. What in holy hell had he been thinking?
He'd actually had the red custom painted.
"It's beautiful, Rhett—" Her eyes lit up with childish delight—his stomach lurched at the childish part. "I've never seen a carriage that color before—but I thought you just bought a new carriage last year?" Scarlett's recent financial woes alerted her to the impracticalness of such a purchase.
"I figured, 'why not live while you're young'?" he answered, carelessly—too carelessly, but Scarlett was too busy admiring the shiny paint and the two fine new pure white horses he'd bought to pull it. "Hop in, Scarlett." He pulled her up into his ridiculous crimson trap with one hand. The two drove down Decatur Street, and Scarlett delighted in the spectacle they made of themselves, glowing with the satisfaction that she was being noticed by everyone. As much as he enjoyed her pleasure, Rhett couldn't help but feel faintly ridiculous riding around in the insane contraption.
Maybe I am getting old.
"Did you see the look Mrs. Meade gave us as we passed?" Scarlett said, scornfully. "What does that old fool know, anyway? She's just so old-fashioned—just like Frank was, old." As usual, she didn't notice how much her thoughtless words affected him. "He never approved of me doing anything fun or youthful—he just wanted me to stay home and take care of him. He had more ailments than a man has the right to, Rhett, I swear." Rhett began to sweat, as Scarlett ranted on about her dead husband's more irritating qualities—all of which were directly or indirectly connected to his age.
"How old was old Frank, when you married him, my dear?" he asked, casually. She waved one tiny hand dismissively.
"Forty something, fifty something—I don't know." His heart rate quickened with a sudden anxiety—he felt, inexplicably, like he was racing time. "He always wanted to go to bed so early. Frank didn't have the energy to stay up past nine o'clock, can you imagine? If he hadn't died when he did, rest his soul," She crossed herself, unthinking. "I would have been nursing him in his old age." She shuddered visibly at the thought.
Rhett abruptly stopped the carriage.
They were at the far eastern end of Wheat Street, near the edge of the city proper, and Scarlett turned to him, confused as to why he'd stopped his midlife-crisis mobile.
"Rhett, why on—mmfh!" Her words were cut short by the sudden onslaught of his mouth on hers.
She'd driven him to do the youthfullest, stupidest thing he could think of—kiss her boldly and in broad daylight. He grabbed her close to him, practically pawing at her as they necked in his open carriage. He was not kissing her with the slow sensuality she had come to expect from him—his lips were feverish, desperate and even clumsy as he dragged them from her mouth to her neck, nipping the pale flesh at the same time copping a feel indelicately through the thin fabric of her dress like some ardent teenager.
"Rhett—anyone can see—" she hissed, not realizing that he was trying to prove his virility to her in some strange way with even stranger male logic. He ignored her, tightening his grip on her waist and pulling her once again to his mouth, carnally devouring her, thrusting his tongue into her mouth like some sort of insatiable animal.
When a farmer shouted encouragingly at them from his passing fruit cart, Scarlett finally wrenched herself away from Rhett.
"Rhett Butler, what on earth were you thinking?" she admonished. They both were breathing heavily, and he noted with boyish pride that she looked utterly and completely disheveled.
"Thinking has very little to do with these sorts of things, my pet," he breathed out, already feeling like a damned fool for his immature display. He never lost control in front of Scarlett in the way he just had…but to his supreme surprise, she was looking less and less shocked with each passing second and more and more…pleased.
"Honestly, aren't you a grown man?" Her voice had irritation in it mixed with a hint of…pleasure? Scarlett's face was red, but he could see a trace of pride in her small smile as she smoothed her dress and adjusted her hair. Clearly the girl was pleased that she'd driven him to maul her at the smallest provocation. "Take me home, please."
Wordlessly, he turned the carriage around and started heading back to Pitty's house.
"I swear, Rhett, you say I'm a child—back on the road there you were behaving just like some sort of…of…" She struggled to find the word, "Stripling, or something! I haven't been accosted in such an…enthusiastic way since before the War. Maybe you're more like my other beaux than I thought." She was as smug as she was embarrassed.
Rhett sat up straighter in his seat, smirking at what had just happened, his good humor returned. He felt secure in the satisfaction that throughout that little display he'd been able to keep up with her, kiss for kiss, with ease. He wasn't dead yet.
"What can I say, Scarlett, you bring out the boy in me."
He was thinking about getting the carriage painted a different color and anticipating having a nice cigar when he got back to the National. He felt young. When were they getting married again?
Rhett was snapped out of his reverie by her impatient foot-tapping.
"My…fortieth birthday, like I said, was very quiet. I hardly noticed it go by—I was too distracted by you, my dear." A stretch of the truth never hurt anyone.
"Oh, I don't know why I'm even bothering talking about this with you—you've only gotten better looking as you've gotten older!" she cried in frustration. "Men are so lucky—when I'm as old as you I'll be fat and hideous. Woman always have to suffer!"
She was on the verge of tears now, and Rhett was finding it increasingly difficult to comfort her, in light of how ridiculous her fears and insecurities really were—the woman in front of him was still far too beautiful for her own good, if truth be told.
"God, honey, how do you think you're making me feel with all this talk about being old?" he joked, rubbing her arm comfortingly, trying to lighten the mood. "If you're old, what does that make me? I'm likely to keel over any second now."
She gave him a watery, indignant stare.
"You, Rhett Butler, old?" From her lips, the words sounded as outlandish as the average fairy tale. "You aren't old. And don't even think about making jokes about dying." Scarlett was deadly serious, and he stifled a guffaw at her next pronouncement. Her certainty was both sincere and absurd. "You can't die. You won't."
"If there's anything that I expected those British amazons to teach you, it was that men aren't immortal," he teased. She gave him a huffy glare—it mattered little to her husband, though, as the change of subject was bringing her back to her old self in no time. "Everyone grows older, Scarlett—either you live and grow old, or you die young." He was softer now, gentler—she leaned into him unconsciously as he spoke, and he wrapped one arm around her shoulder comfortingly. "It's the way of the world."
"Oh, I know that Rhett, it's only—" She stopped herself mid-sentence, her face concealed by her dark hair.
"Only what?"
"Only I hate it," she admitted, finally. It was as if they were in a carriage, nineteen years before, when she was pregnant with Ella, and he was letting her vent frustrations at him. "I hate the wrinkles, and graying hair, I hate being slower than I used to be, I hate knowing that Ella could have a child anytime now and I'll be a grandmother," the word flew off her tongue like poison.
Her husband thought for a moment, before saying, with the wisdom of his elevated years,
"Yes, you may hate those things, Scarlett—most people do—but did you ever stop to think about the pains of youth?" She looked confused, so he clarified. "Think, honey, about all those foolish choices you made when you were young—those silly, thoughtless, brainless—don't give me that look, Scarlett, I was there for most of them, there's no use in pretending they didn't happen."
Nevertheless, as usual, he had more of a gift for irritating her than making her feel better. At least in the conventional sense.
"What stupid decisions, precisely, am I supposed to have made?" she asked, acidly.
"Well, pining after Ashley Wilkes, for one," he answered, smoothly. "And marrying Charles Hamilton and Frank Kennedy, for another."
"Don't forget dancing with you, that was definitely a mistake," she followed him up, dryly. "Marrying you as well."
"Well, you had no choice in the matter, I wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer," he dismissed. "The question I'm posing is," Rhett continued, at last reaching the point, "If you had all of the wisdom you have now then, do you really think you would have made the same choices?"
"Yes," she answered, unequivocally. Rhett sighed in exasperation. "Well, perhaps not pining after Ashley—I'd have the sense to know how useless he'd be as a husband during a war."
"You're missing the point, Scarlett." As usual.
"As for marrying Frank, well—I did that to save Tara, I'd probably do it the same." She thoughtfully turned her head to one side, contemplating the point.
"If you were as wise then as you are now, you wouldn't have needed to marry old Frank," he muttered, wry self-derision in his voice. Green eyes blinked up at him in puzzlement.
"Why not?"
"You would have remembered your gloves when you came to the jail and you would have hooked me, Scarlett." The prospect of being 'hooked', when he described it in silky tones of amusement, did not sound as though it bothered him very much—in fact, from the way his nimble hands were sneaking their way around her waist in a frankly indecent manner, she guessed he found the idea appealing. "Of course," he whispered in her ear, pulling her closer, "I would have been furious with you after I found out your treachery, but knowing you were my wife would have probably offset the ire quite nicely."
"I had enough wisdom then to know you wouldn't be an easy man to marry, Rhett," she mumbled back, playfully. She yelped a little at the squeeze he gave her, before he lowered his mouth to her ear again.
"You know," he muttered into it, huskily, "I still want you more than I've ever wanted any woman, Scarlett." That's never changed—God help me.
"Forty and all?" she asked, timidly. The question was a sad attempt at offhandedness, but he could sense an underlying insecurity in it. He wanted nothing more than to quash that insecurity and reassure her of the truth.
"Forty and all." Gently, he pulled himself away from her, untangling their bodies so he could more easily cup her cheek in his large, weathered hand. "It's not the years that count, Scarlett—only what you've done with them. And I'd be hard-pressed to find a woman, young or old, who's done half the things you have."
"I feel so restless, Rhett—I know it was foolish, but I—I just wanted something to do." She sighed, heavily. "I can't just sit around and wait to entertain the grandchildren. I thought that this silly dress movement thing—"
"The Rational Dress Movement," he supplied immediately, not surprised that the name of the group whose meetings she had been attending escaped her.
"Yes, that," she agreed impatiently. "I thought that I'd feel young again, doing something so…progressive." She wrinkled her nose at the word. "Really, though, all those women are damn fools—they all want to vote and wear clothes like men—as if that's going to get them equality! If they had any sense they'd keep a firmer hand over their husbands and they wouldn't need to pretend like not wearing dresses makes a whit of difference!"
"I'm sure everyone back in the States will be fascinated to hear your unique opinion on the state of the women's movement, Scarlett," he informed her, irony lacing every word. She didn't notice, too transfixed with the first half of the sentence.
"The States, Rhett?"
"Why yes," he said, briskly. "Now that your thankfully brief stint as a feminist is over, we can go back the States, can't we?"
"And do what, precisely?" she asked, indignantly glaring at the way he persisted in bossing her around—she was a grown woman, for God's sake! Forty years old, and she didn't need her arrogant husband simply telling her that they were going this place or that place without her consent.
"Well, when we return, we could do something very exciting to recapture our youths—how do you fancy riding a hot air balloon?"
"What's that?"
"It's the latest contraption—well, I say latest, they supposedly have been around since the Three Kingdoms—but they're very fashionable right now, they've just started making them functional for pleasure rides. And you know—if you don't want to revisit your home state yet—they also launch them from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris, we could return there." He could see that not even the dimmest bulb was lighting up—so he explained more fully, "They're balloons attached to baskets, Scarlett—you can fly in the air and steer them. The basic idea is to create buoyancy by—"
"I'll keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, thank you, Rhett Butler," she interrupted, firmly, her emerald eyes containing a steelier glint than usual.
"But Scarlett—air travel is the way of the future." He tried to hold back a smile as he phrased his next pronouncement carefully, "It's what all the, eh, young people are all doing."
"Well the 'young people' can fly up into the air and crash into the sun and die if they want to, but you won't see me doing the same," she imperiously proclaimed, jabbing him in the chest with one finger. He had to resist clapping for her and her ridiculous understanding of astronomy. "And," Scarlett continued, narrowing her eyes sternly at him, "You can't convince me otherwise—no more treating me like a child and simply taking me places wherever and whenever you feel you should. I'm far too old for that sort of nonsense."
And finally ready to admit it, he thought, wryly.
"And here I thought that none of that feminist claptrap rubbed off on you," he said, with humor. Suddenly she blushed in embarrassment.
"Oh, Rhett, you won't tell anyone that I went to those 'no frock' meetings, will you?" she asked, anxiously. "If ol' India Wilkes found out, I think I'd die with shame."
"Your secrets are safe with me, my dear—always." He grinned mockingly and ran a hand through his graying hair. "Of course, I'm getting up there—soon I'll be senile and I won't remember anyone's secrets, including my own," he joked.
"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee," she said dismissively, rearranging her hat.
She grasped his arm and they got up, walking down the park's alley slowly—or slower than they might of when they first got married, 17 years before. The couple walked in silence for a few moments, before Scarlett broke it, with,
"You know, it's hard to believe in a few short years we'll be celebrating your sixtieth birthday, Rhett," she mused, thoughtfully. He had grown less sensitive to his age as he'd grown older—the thought of sixty didn't bother him at all as he stood side-by-side with a woman who'd only just accepted she wasn't a girl anymore.
"It does give one pause." A short breath, before—"Do you suppose they'll be a 'Irrational Dress Movement' for me to join then, and keep the spirit of attractive but unreasonable female attire alive?"
She elbowed him in the side with as much strength as she'd thrown crockery at him the first day they met.
"Oh, shut up, Rhett."
"Happy birthday, my dear."
He took it all in stride—just as he always had.
All boring historical details as accurate as we could make them. The portrait of the British lady—fiction, even if she really was a historical character, lived on that street and had a husband by that name.
