"My Bonnie sucks her thumb. I can't make her stop it."
"You should make her stop it," said Mrs. Merriwether vigorously. "It will ruin the shape of her mouth."
"I know! I know! And she has a beautiful mouth. But I don't know what to do."
"Well, Scarlett ought to know," said Mrs. Merriwether shortly. "She's had two other children."
Rhett looked down at his shoes and sighed.
"I've tried putting soap under her finger nails," he said, passing over her remark about Scarlett.
"Soap! Bah! Soap is no good at all. I put quinine on Maybelle's thumb and let me tell you, Captain Butler, she stopped sucking that thumb mighty quick."
"Quinine! I would never have thought of it! I can't thank you enough, Mrs. Merriwether. It was worrying me."
He gave her a smile, so pleasant, so grateful that Mrs. Merriwether stood uncertainly for a moment. But as she told him good-by she was smiling too. She hated to admit to Mrs. Elsing that she had misjudged the man but she was an honest person and she said there had to be something good about a man who loved his child. What a pity Scarlett took no interest in so pretty a creature as Bonnie! There was something pathetic about a man trying to raise a little girl all by himself! Rhett knew very well the pathos of the spectacle, and if it blackened Scarlett's reputation he did not care.
From the time the child could walk he took her about with him constantly, in the carriage or in front of his saddle. When he came home from the bank in the afternoon, he took her walking down Peachtree Street, holding her hand, slowing his long strides to her toddling steps, patiently answering her thousand questions. People were always in their front yards or on their porches at sunset and, as Bonnie was such a friendly, pretty child, with her tangle of black curls and her bright blue eyes, few could resist talking to her. Rhett never presumed on these conversations but stood by, exuding fatherly pride and gratification at the notice taken of his daughter.
Atlanta had a long memory and was suspicious and slow to change. Times were hard and feeling was bitter against anyone who had had anything to do with Bullock and his crowd. But Bonnie had the combined charm of Scarlett and Rhett at their best and she was the small opening wedge Rhett drove into the wall of Atlanta's coldness.
Bonnie grew rapidly and every day it became more evident that Gerald O'Hara had been her grandfather. She had short sturdy legs and wide eyes of Irish blue and a small square jaw that went with a determination to have her own way. She had Gerald's sudden temper to which she gave vent in screaming tantrums that were forgotten as soon as her wishes were gratified. And as long as her father was near her, they were always gratified hastily. He spoiled her despite all the efforts of Mammy and Scarlett, for in all things she pleased him, except one. And that was her fear of the dark.
Until she was two years old she went to sleep readily in the nursery she shared with Wade and Ella. Then, for no apparent reason, she began to sob whenever Mammy waddled out of the room, carrying the lamp. From this she progressed to wakening in the late night hours, screaming with terror, frightening the other two children and alarming the house. Once Dr. Meade had to be called and Rhett was short with him when he diagnosed only bad dreams. All anyone could get from her was one word, "Dark."
Scarlett was inclined to be irritated with the child and favored a spanking. She would not humor her by leaving a lamp burning in the nursery, for then Wade and Ella would be unable to sleep. Rhett, worried but gentle, attempting to extract further information from his daughter, said coldly that if any spanking were done, he would do it personally and to Scarlett.
The upshot of the situation was that Bonnie was removed from the nursery to the room Rhett now occupied alone. 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 fam
ily 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! Dretfull big. And claws."