Gone With the Wind (37 page)

It was very bewildering.

CHAPTER XIII

UNDER MRS. MERRIWETHER’S GOADING, Dr. Meade took action, in the form of a letter to the newspaper wherein be did not mention Rhett by name, though his meaning was obvious. The editor, sensing the social drama of the letter, put it on the second page of the paper, in itself a startling innovation, as the first two pages of the paper were always devoted to advertisements of slaves, mules, plows, coffins, houses for sale or rent, cures for private diseases, abortifacients and restoratives for lost manhood.

The doctor’s letter was the first of a chorus of indignation that was beginning to be heard all over the South against speculators, profiteers and holders of government contracts. Conditions in Wilmington, the chief blockade port, now that Charleston’s port was practically sealed by the Yankee gunboats, had reached the proportions of an open scandal. Speculators swarmed Wilmington and, having the ready cash, bought up boatloads of goods and held them for a rise in prices. The rise always came, for with the increasing scarcity of necessities, prices leaped higher by the month. The civilian population had either to do without or buy at the speculators’ prices, and the poor and those in moderate circumstances were suffering increasing hardships. With the rise in prices, Confederate money sank, and with its rapid fall there rose a wild passion for luxuries. Blockaders were commissioned to bring in necessities but now it was the higher-priced luxuries that filled their boats to the exclusion of the things the Confederacy vitally needed. People frenziedly bought these luxuries with the money they had today, fearing that tomorrow’s prices would be higher and the money worthless.

To make matters worse, there was only one railroad line from Wilmington to Richmond and, while thousands of barrels of flour and boxes of bacon spoiled and rotted in wayside stations for want of transportation, speculators with wines, taffetas and coffee to sell seemed always able to get their goods to Richmond two days after they were landed at Wilmington.

The rumor which had been creeping about underground was now being openly discussed, that Rhett Butler not only ran his own four boats and sold the cargoes at unheard-of prices but bought up the cargoes of other boats and held them for rises in prices. It was said that he was at the head of a combine worth more than a million dollars, with Wilmington as its headquarters for the purpose of buying blockade goods on the docks. They had dozens of warehouses in that city and in Richmond, so the story ran, and the warehouses were crammed with food and clothing that were being held for higher prices. Already soldiers and civilians alike were feeling the pinch, and the muttering against him and his fellow speculators was bitter.

“There are many brave and patriotic men in the blockade arm of the Confederacy’s naval service,” ran the last of the doctor’s letter, “unselfish men who are risking their lives and all their wealth that the Confederacy may survive. They are enshrined in the hearts of all loyal Southerners, and no one begrudges them the scant monetary returns they make for their risks. They are unselfish gentlemen, and we honor them. Of these men, I do not speak.

“But there are other scoundrels who masquerade under the cloak of the blockader for their own selfish gains, and I call down the just wrath and vengeance of an embattled people, fighting in the justest of Causes, on these human vultures who bring in satins and laces when our men are dying for want of quinine, who load their boats with tea and wines when our heroes are writhing for lack of morphia. I execrate these vampires who are sucking the lifeblood of the men who follow Robert Lee—these men who are making the very name of blockader a stench in the nostrils of all patriotic men. How can we endure these scavengers in our midst with their varnished boots when our boys are tramping barefoot into battle? How can we tolerate them with their champagnes and their pates of Strasbourg when our soldiers are shivering about their camp fires and gnawing moldy bacon? I call upon every loyal Confederate to cast them out.”

Atlanta read, knew the oracle had spoken, and, as loyal Confederates, they hastened to cast Rhett out.

Of all the homes which had received him in the fall of 1862, Miss Pittypat’s was almost the only one into which he could enter in 1863. And, except for Melanie, he probably would not have been received there. Aunt Pitty was in a state whenever he was in town. She knew very well what her friends were saying when she permitted him to call but she still lacked the courage to tell him he was unwelcome. Each time he arrived in Atlanta, she set her fat mouth and told the girls that she would meet him at the door and forbid him to enter. And each time he came, a little package in his hand and a compliment for her charm and beauty on his lips, she wilted.

“I just don’t know what to do,” she would moan. “He just looks at me and I—I’m scared to death of what he would do if I told him. He’s got such a bad reputation. Do you suppose he would strike me—or—or— Oh, dear, if Charlie were only alive! Scarlett,
you
must tell him not to call again—tell him in a nice way. Oh, me! I do believe you encourage him, and the whole town is talking and, if your mother ever finds out, what will she say to me? Melly, you must not be so nice to him. Be cool and distant and he will understand. Oh, Melly, do you think I’d better write Henry a note and ask him to speak to Captain Butler?”

“No, I don’t,” said Melanie. “And I won’t be rude to him, either. I think people are acting like chickens with their heads off about Captain Butler. I’m sure he can’t be all the bad things Dr. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether say he is. He wouldn’t hold food from starving people. Why, he even gave me a hundred dollars for the orphans. I’m sure he’s just as loyal and patriotic as any of us and he’s just too proud to defend himself. You know how obstinate men are when they get their backs up.”

Aunt Pitty knew nothing about men, either with their backs up or otherwise, and she could only wave her fat little hands helplessly. As for Scarlett, she had long ago become resigned to Melanie’s habit of seeing good in everyone. Melanie was a fool, but there was nothing anybody could do about it.

Scarlett knew that Rhett was not being patriotic and, though she would have died rather than confess it, she did not care. The little presents he brought her from Nassau, little oddments that a lady could accept with propriety, were what mattered most to her. With prices as high as they were, where on earth could she get needles and bonbons and hairpins, if she forbade the house to him? No, it was easier to shift the responsibility to Aunt Pitty, who after all was the head of the house, the chaperon and the arbiter of morals. Scarlett knew the town gossiped about Rhett’s calls, and about her too; but she also knew that in the eyes of Atlanta Melanie Wilkes could do no wrong, and if Melanie defended Rhett his calls were still tinged with respectability.

However, life would be pleasanter if Rhett would recant his heresies. She wouldn’t have to suffer the embarrassment of seeing him cut openly when she walked down Peachtree Street with him.

“Even if you think such things, why do you say them?” she scolded. “If you’d just think what you please but keep your mouth shut, everything would be so much nicer.”

“That’s your system, isn’t it, my green-eyed hypocrite? Scarlett, Scarlett! I hoped for more courageous conduct from you. I thought the Irish said what they thought and the Divvil take the hindermost. Tell me truthfully, don’t you sometimes almost burst from keeping your mouth shut?”

“Well—yes,” Scarlett confessed reluctantly. “I do get awfully bored when they talk about the Cause, morning, noon and night. But goodness, Rhett Butler, if I admitted it nobody would speak to me and none of the boys would dance with me!”

“Ah, yes, and one must be danced with, at all costs. Well, I admire your self-control but I do not find myself equal to it. Nor can I masquerade in a cloak of romance and patriotism, no matter how convenient it might be. There are enough stupid patriots who are risking every cent they have in the blockade and who are going to come out of this war paupers. They don’t need me among their number, either to brighten the record of patriotism or to increase the roll of paupers, Let them have the haloes. They deserve them—for once I am being sincere—and, besides, haloes will be about all they will have in a year or so.”

“I think you are very nasty to even hint such things when you know very well that England and France are coming in on our side in no time and—”

“Why, Scarlett! You must have been reading a newspaper! I’m surprised at you. Don’t do it again. It addles women’s brains. For your information, I was in England, not a month ago, and I’ll tell you this. England will never help the Confederacy. England never bets on the underdog. That’s why she’s England. Besides, the fat Dutch woman who is sitting on the throne is a God-fearing soul and she doesn’t approve of slavery. Let the English mill workers starve because they can’t get our cotton but never, never strike a blow for slavery. And as for France, that weak imitation of Napoleon is far too busy establishing the French in Mexico to be bothered with us. In fact he welcomes this war, because it keeps us too busy to run his troops out of Mexico. … No, Scarlett, the idea of assistance from abroad is just a newspaper invention to keep up the morale of the South. The Confederacy is doomed. It’s living on its hump now, like the camel, and even the largest of humps aren’t inexhaustible. I give myself about six months more of blockading and then I’m through. After that, it will be too risky. And I’ll sell my boats to some foolish Englishman who thinks he can slip them through. But one way or the other, it’s not bothering me. I’ve made money enough, and it’s in English banks and in gold. None of this worthless paper for me.”

As always when he spoke, he sounded so plausible. Other people might call his utterances treachery but, to Scarlett, they always rang with common sense and truth. And she knew that this was utterly wrong, knew she should be shocked and infuriated. Actually she was neither, but she could pretend to be. It made her feel more respectable and ladylike.

“I think what Dr. Meade wrote about was right, Captain Butler. The only way to redeem yourself is to enlist after you sell your boats. You’re a West Pointer and—”

“You talk like a Baptist preacher making a recruiting speech. Suppose I don’t want to redeem myself? Why should I fight to uphold the system that cast me out? I shall take pleasure in seeing it smashed.”

“I never heard of any system,” she said crossly.

“No? And yet you are a part of it, like I was, and I’ll wager you don’t like it any more than I did. Well, why am I the black sheep of the Butler family? For this reason and no other—I didn’t conform to Charleston and I couldn’t. And Charleston is the South, only intensified. I wonder if you realize yet what a bore it is? So many things that one must do because they’ve always been done. So many things, quite harmless, that one must not do for the same reason. So many things that annoyed me by their senselessness. Not marrying the young lady, of whom you have probably heard, was merely the last straw. Why should I marry a boring fool, simply because an accident prevented me from getting her home before dark? And why permit her wild-eyed brother to shoot and kill me, when I could shoot straighter? If I had been a gentleman, of course, I would have let him kill me and that would have wiped the blot from the Butler escutcheon. But—I like to live. And so I’ve lived and I’ve had a good time. … When I think of my brother, living among the sacred cows of Charleston, and most reverent toward them, and remember his stodgy wife and his Saint Cecilia Balls and his everlasting rice fields—then I know the compensation for breaking with the system. Scarlett, our Southern way of living is as antiquated as the feudal system of the Middle Ages. The wonder is that it’s lasted as long as it has. It had to go and it’s going now. And yet you expect me to listen to orators like Dr. Meade who tell me our Cause is just and holy? And get so excited by the roll of drums that I’ll grab a musket and rush off to Virginia to shed my blood for Marse Robert? What kind of a fool do you think I am? Kissing the rod that chastised me is not in my line. The South and I are even now. The South threw me out to starve once. I haven’t starved, and I am making enough money out of the South’s death throes to compensate me for my lost birthright.”

“I think you are vile and mercenary,” said Scarlett, but her remark was automatic. Most of what he was saying went over her head, as did any conversation that was not personal. But part of it made sense. There were such a lot of foolish things about life among nice people. Having to pretend that her heart was in the grave when it wasn’t. And how shocked everybody had been when she danced at the bazaar. And the infuriating way people lifted their eyebrows every time she did or said anything the least bit different from what every other young woman did and said. But still, she was jarred at hearing him attack the very traditions that irked her most. She had lived too long among people who dissembled politely not to feel disturbed at hearing her own thoughts put into words.

“Mercenary? No, I’m only farsighted. Though perhaps that is merely a synonym for mercenary. At least, people who were not as farsighted as I will call it that. Any loyal Confederate who had a thousand dollars in cash in 1861 could have done what I did, but how few were mercenary enough to take advantage of their opportunities! As for instance, right after Fort Sumter fell and before the blockade was established, I bought up several thousand bales of cotton at dirt-cheap prices and ran them to England. They are still there in warehouses in Liverpool. I’ve never sold them. I’m holding them until the English mills have to have cotton and will give me any price I ask. I wouldn’t be surprised if I got a dollar a pound.”

“You’ll get a dollar a pound when elephants roost in trees!”

“I’ll believe I’ll get it. Cotton is at seventy-two cents a pound already. I’m going to be a rich man when this war is over, Scarlett, because I was farsighted—pardon me, mercenary. I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the upbuilding of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the upbuilding, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day.”