“Had you been married long?
Forgive my questions but I have been away from this section for so long.”
“Two months,” said Scarlett, unwillingly.
“A tragedy, no less,” his easy voice continued.
Oh, damn him, she thought violently.
If he was any other man in the world I could simply freeze up and order him off.
But he knows about Ashley and he knows I didn’t love Charlie.
And my hands are tied.
She said nothing, still looking down at her fan.
“And this is your first social appearance?”
“I know it looks quite odd,” she explained rapidly.
“But the McLure girls who were to take this booth were called away and there was no one else, so Melanie and I—”
“No sacrifice is too great for the Cause.”
Why, that was what Mrs. Elsing had said, but when she said it it didn’t sound the same way.
Hot words started to her lips but she choked them back.
After all, she was here, not for the Cause, but because she was tired of sitting home.
“I have always thought,” he said reflectively, “that the system of mourning, of immuring women in crepe for the rest of their lives and forbidding them normal enjoyment is just as barbarous as the Hindu suttee.”
“Settee?”
He laughed and she blushed for her ignorance.
She hated people who used words unknown to her.
“In India, when a man dies he is burned, instead of buried, and his wife always climbs on the funeral pyre and is burned with him.”
“How dreadful!
Why do they do it?
Don’t the police do anything about it?”
“Of course not.
A wife who didn’t burn herself would be a social outcast.
All the worthy Hindu matrons would talk about her for not behaving as a well-bred lady should—precisely as those worthy matrons in the corner would talk about you, should you appear tonight in a red dress and lead a reel.
Personally, I think suttee much more merciful than our charming Southern custom of burying widows alive!”
“How dare you say I’m buried alive!”
“How closely women crutch the very chains that bind them!
You think the Hindu custom barbarous—but would you have had the courage to appear here tonight if the Confederacy hadn’t needed you?”
Arguments of this character were always confusing to Scarlett. His were doubly confusing because she had a vague idea there was truth in them.
But now was the time to squelch him.
“Of course, I wouldn’t have come.
It would have been—well, disrespectful to—it would have seemed as if I hadn’t lov—”
His eyes waited on her words, cynical amusement in them, and she could not go on.
He knew she hadn’t loved Charlie and he wouldn’t let her pretend to the nice polite sentiments that she should express.
What a terrible, terrible thing it was to have to do with a man who wasn’t a gentleman.
A gentleman always appeared to believe a lady even when he knew she was lying.
That was Southern chivalry.
A gentleman always obeyed the rules and said the correct things and made life easier for a lady.
But this man seemed not to care for rules and evidently enjoyed talking of things no one ever talked about.
“I am waiting breathlessly.”
“I think you are horrid,” she said, helplessly, dropping her eyes.
He leaned down across the counter until his mouth was near her ear and hissed, in a very creditable imitation of the stage villains who appeared infrequently at the Athenaeum Hall:
“Fear not, fair lady!
Your guilty secret is safe with me!”
“Oh,” she whispered, feverishly, “how can you say such things!”
“I only thought to ease your mind.
What would you have me say?