Gerald O'Hara of the past had spoken but Gerald O'Hara—of the here? Now?—was silent as the grave. The scene before them was fading, but Gerald still seemed transfixed by it. Though the images were rapidly growing less and less distinct, snippets of conversation still carried. Scarlett's high, piping voice, Gerald's booming one, praising her prettiness. Praising it so that Rhett thought for the first time in his life, how terrible it must be to be a woman. Oh, he had always considered his sex above the gentler one—but he had supposed women were complicit in forging the chains that held them back. Now he had a pang of uncertainty. If a girl was praised for her charm, her beauty, from her earliest age, how could she be expected to develop other aspects of her character? Kindness—gentleness—tenderness.
The people inside Twelve Oaks—the father and daughter—were moving, through the foyer and out onto the verandah, into the night, and instinctively Rhett followed them, as the ghostly child Scarlett and her father seated their mounts, made their way back down the bridal path and toward home, the frosty sky a great dome overhead.
"Did you see how I put India Wilkes in her place?" Scarlett tossed her head, and looked at her father. "She tried to hold me back when I cut in on Ashley and that mealy-mouthed little Melanie. But I yanked her curl and pushed her away. She won't try something like that again."
Next to Rhett, Gerald O'Hara moved almost soundlessly. But up ahead, trotting next to his daughter, Gerald O'Hara of days past chuckled indulgently.
"How could he resist, an' with you in your pretty new dress? My pet is the toast of Clayton County—a regular firebrand!"
"I'm the most like you, Pa," said Scarlett, certainly, slanting her eyes toward him to see if he was pleased—and he was. A wind caught her curls and lifted them away from her rabbit's fur collar. "Careen and Suellen—they're Mother's girls, of course. But I'm yours. You don't need a son as long as you've got me."
In response, Gerald-of-then reached over and took his girl's mittened hand, as she sat on her pony. "Sure and I don't," he said, but Rhett heard the quaver in the man's voice, which he covered up by beginning to sing,
The holly green, the ivy green
The prettiest picture you've ever seen
Is Christmas in Killarney
With all of the folks at home!
They raced on ahead, but their observers followed at a slower pace. Gerald O'Hara, Rhett noticed—the Gerald beside him now—had been wearing a plain waistcoat and breeches—the very same outfit he often wore in life, though insufficient against this night's temperature. But he hadn't seemed to mind the cold until now. He shivered. When he lifted his face, Rhett could see that the moment's hesitation hadn't anything to do with a physical discomfort.
"Why did you bring me here?" Rhett asked, in a low voice. "To see this? If it grieves you so? Why did you not leave me in my bed, sir?"
Because in his own chest, an uncomfortable feeling was welling. Shame? But no—Rhett had not felt shame in many years. He rolled his shoulders, and he shrugged to ward it off.
They had reached Tara. Gerald picked up a fallen hickory switch and began to twitch it around his knees. Rhett seated himself on a low stone wall, and began to pat his pockets for his cigars. He found one—lighted it. A door to the house opened and Pork came out, with a basket of scraps to toss to the pigs.
"Burnin' leaves," he commented to himself, smelling the smoke on the air. "Strange time to do it, Christmas night."
Gerald's face brightened to see his old valet, he lifted his hand and looked as if he would call out, before he remembered. Pork went back inside, and then he turned and sighed. Settled himself next to Rhett on the wall, his bandy legs dangling.
"It does pain me, true," he agreed. "To see the mistakes that I made with the girl. A person isn't born knowing what to do—more's the pity—he's taught. I taught the girl the wrong things. But I want you to see that. I want you to see that her faults aren't her fault—not entirely. I did want a son—I thought of her that way—and it's fine, sure, for a man to be brash and rough. But a woman must learn more. Ellen tried to teach her—you saw that—but I was always lord of this manor. Ah, well! Ah, well! To do it again—again! Sometimes I wonder God did not punish me for it, but then—how could he? He is a father himself. And a father of a daughter can't be blamed for loving her."
"There is a difference between loving and spoiling," Rhett remarked, but that uncomfortable feeling was back, lodged in the space between his ribs. For hadn't he treated Scarlett much the same way, sometimes? Praising her cruelty, laughing at her jabs and spites, encouraging her to fly in the face of what was right, and proper? He shrugged it off. He felt a little smug toward O'Hara, and a little annoyed. So he had spoiled Scarlett? So what? Half the girls in Charleston, in Savannah, in New Orleans, in Richmond, all over the South, had been indulged similarly. And Rhett had been a father himself, and he hadn't spoiled his little girl.
"Didn't ye?" asked Gerald, flicking his hickory switch, with a little sidelong glance.
Before Rhett could help himself, images crowded his mind. They were not shown to him, with a ghostly hand, they were only recalled from times past. Bonnie Blue, given the chipped bowl she did not like to eat her breakfast porridge out of, picking it up, smashing it on the floor. Scarlett exclaiming, perhaps not in the same dulcet tones that Ellen O'Hara had used to protest her husband's actions, but here was Rhett sneering at her, picking his own bowl up, heaving it at the wall where it shattered with a merry crashing sound. Bonnie laughed, her head thrown back—laughed at her mother. Here was Bonnie tearing up a book that belonged to Ella. Deviling Wade Hampton, as he tried to study his arithmetic. Scarlett complaining, raising her voice, even raising a hand to the child—he had wanted to beat her for that! Always, always, Rhett had taken his girl's side.
He thought back to what he had seen at Twelve Oaks, recalled young Scarlett's bossiness, her greediness, her disdain of other peoples' feelings and desires.
Perhaps—perhaps Bonnie should have grown up to be like that?
No! No. Not Bonnie. She was sweet and good—there was nothing of Scarlett's nastiness in her.
"How dare you imply such a thing to me?" asked Rhett, tamping out the ember of his cigar against the stone of the wall. His voice shook and his hands were shaking. He decided to raise his voice. "You, Gerald O'Hara—you didn't just spoil the girl. You created a monster. My Bonnie wasn't a monster."
"She was a sweet child, sure," agreed Gerald affably. "At age four. But at fourteen, how would she have been?"
How would she have been? For a moment Rhett could see her—tall and slightly stocky, the Irish in her, black-curled, snappingly blue of eye. Was that a gleam of acquisitiveness there, as the adult Bonnie turned her head? Was that a cruel smile playing on her lips?
"No!" he shouted, to banish the image. He jumped from the wall. "No! I'll never know what Bonnie was like because she died—she died. God damn you—for making me think—! Damn you! I'll kill you—I will—"
He lunged for his father-in-law, who promptly vanished. The space where he was standing was now devoid of any presence. Rhett lost his balance and fell, heaving for breath, onto the frozen ground. The lights shining from the windows of Tara grew fainter and fainter—a great mist crept up, quickly up, from the hollows by the river. The house disappeared stone by stone, until it was gone, and Rhett was alone in the whirling mist. He recalled Scarlett's old dream, explained to him—he was living it. Where was he? Where was home, and safe, and light? For the first time in many, many years, Rhett Butler felt something like real fear.
"Gerald!" he cried. "I'm sorry!" His voice creaked on the last word, so unused was he to using it. "Gerald—Gerald O'Hara! Come back—come back! Oh, someone—please. Someone please help me. Please!"