"I wonder what our grandchildren will be like!"
"Are you suggesting by that 'our' that you and I will have mutual grandchildren? Fie, Mrs.
Kennedy!"
Scarlett, suddenly conscious of her error of speech, went red. It was more than his joking words that shamed her, for she was suddenly aware again of her thickening body. In no way had either of them ever hinted at her condition and she had always kept the lap robe high under her armpits when with him, even on warm days, comforting herself in the usual feminine manner with the belief that she did not show at all when thus covered, and she was suddenly sick with quick rage at her own condition and shame that he should know.
"You get out of this buggy, you dirty-minded varmint," she said, her voice shaking.
"I'll do nothing of the kind," he returned calmly. "It'll be dark before you get home and there's a new colony of darkies living in tents and shanties near the next spring, mean niggers I've been told, and I see no reason why you should give the impulsive Ku Klux a cause for putting on their nightshirts and riding abroad this evening."
"Get out!" she cried, tugging at the reins and suddenly nausea overwhelmed her. He stopped the horse quickly, passed her two clean handkerchiefs and held her head over the side of the buggy with some skill. The afternoon sun, slanting low through the newly leaved trees, spun sickeningly for a few moments in a swirl of gold and green. When the spell had passed, she put her head in her hands and cried from sheer mortification. Not only had she vomited before a man--in itself as horrible a contretemps as could overtake a woman--but by doing so, the
humiliating fact of her pregnancy must now be evident. She felt that she could never look him in the face again. To have this happen with him, of all people, with Rhett who had no respect for women! She cried, expecting some coarse and jocular remark from him which she would never be able to forget.
"Don't be a fool," he said quietly. "And you are a fool, if you are crying for shame. Come, Scarlett, don't be a child. Surely you must know that, not being blind, I knew you were pregnant."
She said "Oh" in a stunned voice and tightened her fingers over her crimson face. The word itself horrified her. Frank always referred to her pregnancy embarrassedly as "your condition," Gerald had been won't to say delicately "in the family way," when he had to mention such matters, and ladies genteelly referred to pregnancy as being "in a fix."
"You are a child if you thought I didn't know, for all your smothering yourself under that hot lap robe. Of course, I knew. Why else do you think I've been--"
He stopped suddenly and a silence fell between them. He picked up the reins and clucked
to the horse. He went on talking quietly and as his drawl fell pleasantly on her ears, some of the color faded from her down-tucked face.
"I didn't think you could be so shocked, Scarlett. I thought you were a sensible person and I'm disappointed. Can it be possible that modesty still lingers in your breast? I'm afraid I'm not a gentleman to have mentioned the matter. And I know I'm not a gentleman, in view of the fact that pregnant women do not embarrass me as they should. I find it possible to treat them as normal creatures and not look at the ground or the sky or anywhere else in the universe except their waist lines--and then cast at them those furtive glances I've always thought the height of indecency.
Why should I? It's a perfectly normal state. The Europeans are far more sensible than we are.
They compliment expectant mothers upon their expectations. While I wouldn't advise going that far, still it's more sensible than our way of trying to ignore it. It's a normal state and women should be proud of it, instead of hiding behind closed doors as if they'd committed a crime."
"Proud!" she cried in a strangled voice. "Proud--ugh!"
"Aren't you proud to be having a child?"
"Oh dear God, no! I--I hate babies!"
"You mean--Frank's baby."
"No--anybody's baby."
For a moment she went sick again at this new error of speech, but his voice went on as
easily as though he had not marked it.
"Then we're different. I like babies."
"You like them?" she cried, looking up, so startled at the statement that she forgot her embarrassment "What a liar you are!"
"I like babies and I like little children, till they begin to grow up and acquire adult habits of thought and adult abilities to lie and cheat and be dirty. That can't be news to you. You know I like Wade Hampton a lot, for all that he isn't the boy he ought to be."