It was exciting to go out with him for he was so handsome. Somehow she had never given his looks a thought before, and in Atlanta everyone had been too preoccupied with his shortcomings ever to talk about his appearance. But here in New Orleans she could see how the eyes of other women followed him and how they fluttered when he bent over their hands. The realization that other women were attracted by her husband, and perhaps envied her, made her suddenly proud to be seen by his side.
“Why, we’re a handsome people,” thought Scarlett with pleasure.
Yes, as Rhett had prophesied, marriage could be a lot of fun. Not only was it fun but she was learning many things. That was odd in itself, because Scarlett had thought life could teach her no more. Now she felt like a child, every day on the brink of a new discovery.
First, she learned that marriage with Rhett was a far different matter from marriage with either Charles or Frank. They had respected her and been afraid of her temper. They had begged for favors and if it pleased her, she had bestowed them. Rhett did not fear her and, she often thought, did not respect her very much either. What he wanted to do, he did, and if she did not like it, he laughed at her. She did not love him but he was undoubtedly an exciting person to live with. The most exciting thing about him was that even in his outbursts of passion which were flavored sometimes with cruelty, sometimes with irritating amusement, he seemed always to be holding himself under restraint, always riding his emotions with a curb [curb〈v.〉遏製] bit.
“I guess that’s because he isn’t really in love with me,” she thought and was content enough with the state of affairs. “I should hate for him to ever turn completely loose in any way.” But still the thought of the possibility teased her curiosity in an exciting way.
Living with Rhett, she learned many new things about him, and she had thought she knew him so well. She learned that his voice could be as silky as a cat’s fur one moment and crisp and crackling with oaths the next. He could tell, with apparent sincerity and approval, stories of courage and honor and virtue and love in the odd places he had been, and follow them with ribald stories of coldest cynicism. She knew no man should tell such stories to his wife but they were entertaining and they appealed to something coarse and earthy in her. He could be an ardent, almost a tender, lover for a brief while, and almost immediately a mocking devil who ripped the lid from her gunpowder temper, fired it and enjoyed the explosion. She learned that his compliments were always two edged and his tenderest expressions open to suspicion. In fact, in those two weeks in New Orleans, she learned everything about him except what he really was.
Some mornings he dismissed the maid and brought her the breakfast tray himself and fed her as though she were a child, took the hairbrush from her hand and brushed her long dark hair until it snapped and crackled. Yet other mornings she was torn rudely out of deep slumber when he snatched all the bed covers from her and tickled her bare feet. Sometimes he listened with dignified interest to details of her businesses, nodding approval at her sagacity, and at other times he called her somewhat dubious tradings scavenging, highway robbery and extortion [extortion〈n.〉敲詐]. He took her to plays and annoyed her by whispering that God probably didn’t approve of such amusements, and to churches and, sotto voce, retailed funny obscenities and then reproved her for laughing. He encouraged her to speak her mind, to be flippant and daring. She picked up from him the gift of stinging words and sardonic phrases and learned to relish using them for the power they gave her over other people. But she did not possess his sense of humor which tempered his malice, nor his smile that jeered at himself even while he was jeering others.