Her small bed was placed beside his large one and a shaded lamp burned on the table all night long.
The town buzzed when this story got about.
Somehow, there was something indelicate about a girl child sleeping in her father's room, even though the girl was only two years old.
Scarlett suffered from this gossip in two ways.
First, it proved indubitably that she and her husband occupied separate rooms, in itself a shocking enough state of affairs.
Second, everyone thought that if the child was afraid to sleep alone, her place was with her mother.
And Scarlett did not feel equal to explaining that she could not sleep in a lighted room nor would Rhett permit the child to sleep with her.
"You'd never wake up unless she screamed and then you'd probably slap her," he said shortly.
Scarlett was annoyed at the weight he attached to Bonnie's night terrors but she thought she could eventually remedy the state of affairs and transfer the child back to the nursery.
All children were afraid of the dark and the only cure was firmness.
Rhett was just being perverse in the matter, making her appear a poor mother, just to pay her back for banishing him from her room.
He had never put foot in her room or even rattled the door knob since the night she told him she did not want any more children.
Thereafter and until he began staying at home on account of Bonnie's fears, he had been absent from the supper table more often than he had been present.
Sometimes he had stayed out all night and Scarlett, lying awake behind her locked door, hearing the clock count off the early morning hours, wondered where he was.
She remembered:
"There are other beds, my dear!"
Though the thought made her writhe, there was nothing she could do about it.
There was nothing she could say that would not precipitate a scene in which he would be sure to remark upon her locked door and the probable connection Ashley had with it.
Yes, his foolishness about Bonnie sleeping in a lighted room--in his lighted room--was just a mean way of paying her back.
She did not realize the importance he attached to Bonnie's foolishness nor the completeness of his devotion to the child until one dreadful night.
The family never forgot that night.
That day Rhett had met an ex-blockade runner and they had had much to say to each other.
Where they had gone to talk and drink, Scarlett did not know but she suspected, of course, Belle Watling's house.
He did not come home in the afternoon to take Bonnie walking nor did he come home to supper.
Bonnie, who had watched from the window impatiently all afternoon, anxious to display a mangled collection of beetles and roaches to her father, had finally been put to bed by Lou, amid wails and protests.
Either Lou had forgotten to light the lamp or it had burned out.
No one ever knew exactly what happened but when Rhett finally came home, somewhat the worse for drink, the house was in an uproar and Bonnie's screams reached him even in the stables.
She had waked in darkness and called for him and he had not been there.
All the nameless horrors that peopled her small imagination clutched her.
All the soothing and bright lights brought by Scarlett and the servants could not quiet her and Rhett, coming up the stairs three at a jump, looked like a man who has seen Death.
When he finally had her in his arms and from her sobbing gasps had recognized only one word,
"Dark," he turned on Scarlett and the negroes in fury.
"Who put out the light? Who left her alone in the dark?
Prissy, I'll skin you for this, you--"
"Gawdlmighty, Mist' Rhett! 'Twarn't me!
'Twuz Lou!"
"Fo' Gawd, Mist' Rhett, Ah--"
"Shut up.
You know my orders.
By God, I'll--get out.
Don't come back.
Scarlett, give her some money and see that she's gone before I come down stairs.
Now, everybody get out, everybody!"
The negroes fled, the luckless Lou wailing into her apron.
But Scarlett remained.
It was hard to see her favorite child quieting in Rhett's arms when she had screamed so pitifully in her own.
It was hard to see the small arms going around his neck and hear the choking voice relate what had frightened her, when she, Scarlett, had gotten nothing coherent out of her.
"So it sat on your chest," said Rhett softly.
"Was it a big one?"
"Oh, yes!