Datasets:
minmarn
/
Gone_with_the_wind

Dataset card Data Studio Files Community
1
text
stringlengths
0
75
"I--I said--I told them I didn't know." And with a rush, "But I
didn't care and I hit them. Were you in the war, Uncle Rhett?"
"Yes," said Rhett, suddenly violent. "I was in the war. I was in
the army for eight months. I fought all the way from Lovejoy up to
Franklin, Tennessee. And I was with Johnston when he surrendered."
Wade wriggled with pride but Scarlett laughed.
"I thought you were ashamed of your war record," she said. "Didn't
you tell me to keep it quiet?"
"Hush," he said briefly. "Does that satisfy you, Wade?"
"Oh, yes, sir! I knew you were in the war. I knew you weren't
scared like they said. But--why weren't you with the other little
boys' fathers?"
"Because the other little boys' fathers were such fools they had to
put them in the infantry. I was a West Pointer and so I was in the
artillery. In the regular artillery, Wade, not the Home Guard. It
takes a pile of sense to be in the artillery, Wade."
"I bet," said Wade, his face shining. "Did you get wounded, Uncle
Rhett?"
Rhett hesitated.
"Tell him about your dysentery," jeered Scarlett.
Rhett carefully set the baby on the floor and pulled his shirt and
undershirt out of his trouser band.
"Come here, Wade, and I'll show you where I was wounded."
Wade advanced, excited, and gazed where Rhett's finger pointed. A
long raised scar ran across his brown chest and down into his
heavily muscled abdomen. It was the souvenir of a knife fight in
the California gold fields but Wade did not know it. He breathed
heavily and happily.
"I guess you're 'bout as brave as my father, Uncle Rhett."
"Almost but not quite," said Rhett, stuffing his shirt into his
trousers. "Now, go on and spend your dollar and whale hell out of
any boy who says I wasn't in the army."
Wade went dancing out happily, calling to Pork, and Rhett picked up
the baby again.
"Now why all these lies, my gallant soldier laddie?" asked
Scarlett.
"A boy has to be proud of his father--or stepfather. I can't let
him be ashamed before the other little brutes. Cruel creatures,
children."
"Oh, fiddle-dee-dee!"
"I never thought about what it meant to Wade," said Rhett slowly.
"I never thought how he's suffered. And it's not going to be that
way for Bonnie."
"What way?"
"Do you think I'm going to have my Bonnie ashamed of her father?
Have her left out of parties when she's nine or ten? Do you think
I'm going to have her humiliated like Wade for things that aren't
her fault but yours and mine?"
"Oh, children's parties!"
"Out of children's parties grow young girls' debut parties. Do you
think I'm going to let my daughter grow up outside of everything
decent in Atlanta? I'm not going to send her North to school and
to visit because she won't be accepted here or in Charleston or
Savannah or New Orleans. And I'm not going to see her forced to
marry a Yankee or a foreigner because no decent Southern family
will have her--because her mother was a fool and her father a
blackguard."
Wade, who had come back to the door, was an interested but puzzled
listener.
"Bonnie can marry Beau, Uncle Rhett."
The anger went from Rhett's face as he turned to the little boy,
and he considered his words with apparent seriousness as he always
did when dealing with the children.
"That's true, Wade. Bonnie can marry Beau Wilkes, but who will you
marry?"
"Oh, I shan't marry anyone," said Wade confidently, luxuriating in
a man-to-man talk with the one person, except Aunt Melly, who never
reproved and always encouraged him. "I'm going to go to Harvard
and be a lawyer, like my father, and then I'm going to be a brave
soldier just like him."