When she thought of the possibility of this final insult to Tara, her heart pounded so hard she could scarcely breathe. She was trying to get her mind on her problem, trying to figure some way out, but each time she collected her thoughts, fresh gusts of rage and fear shook her. There must be some way out, there must be someone somewhere who had money she could borrow.
Money couldn't just dry up and blow away. Somebody had to have money. Then the laughing
words of Ashley came back to her:
"Only one person, Rhett Butler … who has money."
Rhett Butler. She walked quickly into the parlor and shut the door behind her. The dim
gloom of drawn blinds and winter twilight closed about her. No one would think of hunting for her here and she wanted time to think, undisturbed. The idea which had just occurred to her was so simple she wondered why she had not thought of it before.
"I'll get the money from Rhett. I'll sell him the diamond earbobs. Or I'll borrow the money from him and let him keep the earbobs till I can pay him back."
For a moment, relief was so great she felt weak. She would pay the taxes and laugh in
Jonas Wilkerson's face. But close on this happy thought came relentless knowledge.
"It's not only for this year that I'll need tax money. There's next year and all the years of my life. If I pay up this time, they'll raise the taxes higher next time till they drive me out. If I make a good cotton crop, they'll tax it till I'll get nothing for it or maybe confiscate it outright and say it's Confederate cotton. The Yankees and the scoundrels teamed up with them have got me where they want me. All my life, as long as I live, I'll be afraid they'll get me somehow. All my life I'll be scared and scrambling for money and working myself to death, only to see my work go for nothing and my cotton stolen… Just borrowing three hundred dollars for the taxes will be only a stopgap. What I want is to get out of this fix, for good--so I can go to sleep at night without worrying over what's going to happen to me tomorrow, and next month, and next year."
Her mind ticked on steadily. Coldly and logically an idea grew in her brain. She thought
of Rhett, a flash of white teeth against swarthy skin, sardonic black eyes caressing her. She recalled the hot night in Atlanta, close to the end of the siege, when he sat on Aunt Pitty's porch half hidden in the summer darkness, and she felt again the heat of his hand upon her arm as he said: "I want you more than I have ever wanted any woman--and I've waited longer for you than I've ever waited for any woman."
"I'll marry him," she thought coolly. "And then I'll never have to bother about money again."
Oh, blessed thought, sweeter than hope of Heaven, never to worry about money again, to
know that Tara was safe, that the family was fed and clothed, that she would never again have to bruise herself against stone walls!
She felt very old. The afternoon's events had drained her of all feeling, first the startling news about the taxes, then Ashley and, last, her murderous rage at Jonas Wilkerson. Now there was no emotion left in her. If all her capacity to feel had not been utterly exhausted, something in her would have protested against the plan taking form in her mind, for she hated Rhett as she hated no other person in all the world. But she could not feel. She could only think and her thoughts were very practical.
"I said some terrible things to him that night when he deserted us on the road, but I can make him forget them," she thought contemptuously, still sure of her power to charm. "Butter won't melt in my mouth when I'm around him. I'll make him think I always loved him and was just upset and frightened that night. Oh, men are so conceited they'll believe anything that flatters them… I must never let him dream what straits we're in, not till I've got him. Oh, he mustn't know! If he even suspected how poor we are, he'd know it was his money I wanted and not
himself. After all, there's no way he could know, for even Aunt Pitty doesn't know the worst. And after I've married him, he'll have to help us. He can't let his wife's people starve." His wife. Mrs.
Rhett Butler. Something of repulsion, buried deep beneath her cold thinking, stirred faintly and then was stilled. She remembered the embarrassing and disgusting events of her brief honeymoon with Charles, his fumbling hands, his awkwardness, his incomprehensible emotions--and Wade Hampton.
"I won't think about it now. I'll bother about it after I've married him…"
After she had married him. Memory rang a bell. A chill went down her spine. She
remembered again that night on Aunt Pitty's porch, remembered how she asked him if he was proposing to her, remembered how hatefully he had laughed and said: "My dear, I'm not a marrying man."