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.