If only he would ever lose his temper too, then she would not feel at such a disadvantage.
After tilts with him from which she seldom emerged the victor she vowed he was impossible, ill-bred and no gentleman and she would have nothing more to do with him.
But sooner or later, he returned to Atlanta, called, presumably on Aunt Pitty, and presented Scarlett, with overdone gallantry, a box of bonbons he had brought her from Nassau.
Or preempted a seat by her at a musicale or claimed her at a dance, and she was usually so amused by his bland impudence that she laughed and overlooked his past misdeeds until the next occurred.
For all his exasperating qualities, she grew to look forward to his calls.
There was something exciting about him that she could not analyze, something different from any man she had ever known. There was something breathtaking in the grace of his big body which made his very entrance into a room like an abrupt physical impact, something in the impertinence and bland mockery of his dark eyes that challenged her spirit to subdue him.
“It’s almost like I was in love with him!” she thought, bewildered.
“But I’m not and I just can’t understand it.”
But the exciting feeling persisted.
When he came to call, his complete masculinity made Aunt Pitty’s well-bred and ladylike house seem small, pale and a trifle fusty.
Scarlett was not the only member of the household who reacted strangely and unwillingly to his presence, for he kept Aunt Pitty in a flutter and a ferment.
While Pitty knew Ellen would disapprove of his calls on her daughter, and knew also that the edict of Charleston banning him from polite society was not one to be lightly disregarded, she could no more resist his elaborate compliments and hand kissing than a fly can resist a honey pot.
Moreover, he usually brought her some little gift from Nassau which he assured her he had purchased especially for her and blockaded in at risk of his life-papers of pins and needles, buttons, spools of silk thread and hairpins.
It was almost impossible to obtain these small luxuries now—ladies were wearing hand-whittled wooden hairpins and covering acorns with cloth for buttons—and Pitty lacked the moral stamina to refuse them.
Besides, she had a childish love of surprise packages and could not resist opening his gifts.
And, having once opened them, she did not feel that she could refuse them.
Then, having accepted his gifts, she could not summon courage enough to tell him his reputation made it improper for him to call on three lone women who had no male protector.
Aunt Pitty always felt that she needed a male protector when Rhett Butler was in the house.
“I don’t know what it is about him,” she would sigh helplessly.
“But—well, I think he’d be a nice, attractive man if I could just feel that—well, that deep down in his heart he respected women.”
Since the return of her wedding ring, Melanie had felt that Rhett was a gentleman of rare refinement and delicacy and she was shocked at this remark.
He was unfailingly courteous to her, but she was a little timid with him, largely because she was shy with any man she had not known from childhood. Secretly she was very sorry for him, a feeling which would have amused him had he been aware of it.
She was certain that some romantic sorrow had blighted his life and made him hard and bitter, and she felt that what he needed was the love of a good woman.
In all her sheltered life she had never seen evil and could scarcely credit its existence, and when gossip whispered things about Rhett and the girl in Charleston she was shocked and unbelieving. And, instead of turning her against him, it only made her more timidly gracious toward him because of her indignation at what she fancied was a gross injustice done him.
Scarlett silently agreed with Aunt Pitty.
She, too, felt that he had no respect for any woman, unless perhaps for Melanie.
She still felt unclothed every time his eyes ran up and down her figure.
It was not that he ever said anything. Then she could have scorched him with hot words.
It was the bold way his eyes looked out of his swarthy face with a displeasing air of insolence, as if all women were his property to be enjoyed in his own good time.
Only with Melanie was this look absent.
There was never that cool look of appraisal, never mockery in his eyes, when he looked at Melanie; and there was an especial note in his voice when he spoke to her, courteous, respectful, anxious to be of service.
“I don’t see why you’re so much nicer to her than to me,” said Scarlett petulantly, one afternoon when Melanie and Pitty had retired to take their naps and she was alone with him.
For an hour she had watched Rhett hold the yarn Melanie was winding for knitting, had noted the blank inscrutable expression when Melanie talked at length and with pride of Ashley and his promotion.
Scarlett knew Rhett had no exalted opinion of Ashley and cared nothing at all about the fact that he had been made a major.
Yet he made polite replies and murmured the correct things about Ashley’s gallantry.
And if I so much as mention Ashley’s name, she had thought irritably, he cocks his eyebrow up and smiles that nasty, knowing smile! “I’m much prettier than she is,” she continued, “and I don’t see why you’re nicer to her.”
“Dare I hope that you are jealous?”
“Oh, don’t presume!”
“Another hope crushed.
If I am ‘nicer’ to Mrs. Wilkes, it is because she deserves it.
She is one of the very few kind, sincere and unselfish persons I have ever known.
But perhaps you have failed to note these qualities.
And moreover, for all her youth, she is one of the few great ladies I have ever been privileged to know.”
“Do you mean to say you don’t think I’m a great lady, too?”
“I think we agreed on the occasion of our first meeting that you were no lady at all.”
“Oh, if you are going to be hateful and rude enough to bring that up again!
How can you hold that bit of childish temper against me?
That was so long ago and I’ve grown up since then and I’d forget all about it if you weren’t always harping and hinting about it.”
“I don’t think it was childish temper and I don’t believe you’ve changed.
You are just as capable now as then of throwing vases if you don’t get your own way.