"Yes, the money the Yankees were so curious about. Scarlett, it wasn't altogether
meanness that kept me from giving you the money you wanted. If I'd drawn a draft they could have traced it somehow and I doubt if you'd have gotten a cent. My only hope lay in doing nothing. I knew the money was pretty safe, for if worst came to worst, if they had located it and tried to take it away from me, I would have named every Yankee patriot who sold me bullets and machinery during the war. Then there would have been a stink, for some of them are high up in
Washington now. In fact, it was my threat to unbosom my conscience about them that got me out of jail. I--"
"Do you mean you--you actually have the Confederate gold?"
"Not all of it. Good Heavens, no! There must be fifty or more ex-blockaders who have plenty salted away in Nassau and England and Canada. We will be pretty unpopular with the Confederates who weren't as slick as we were. I have got close to half a million. Just think, Scarlett, a half-million dollars, if you'd only restrained your fiery nature and not rushed into wedlock again!"
A half-million dollars. She felt a pang of almost physical sickness at the thought of so
much money. His jeering words passed over her head and she did not even hear them. It was hard to believe there was so much money in all this bitter and poverty-stricken world. So much money, so very much money, and someone else had it, someone who took it lightly and didn't need it. And she had only a sick elderly husband and this dirty, piddling, little store between her and a hostile world. It wasn't fair that a reprobate like Rhett Butler should have so much and she, who carried so heavy a load, should have so little. She hated him, sitting there in his dandified attire, taunting her. Well, she wouldn't swell his conceit by complimenting him on his cleverness.
She longed viciously for sharp words with which to cut him.
"I suppose you think it's honest to keep the Confederate money. Well, it isn't. It's plain out and out stealing and you know it. I wouldn't have that on my conscience."
"My! How sour the grapes are today!" he exclaimed, screwing up his face. "And just whom am I stealing from?"
She was silent, trying to think just whom indeed. After all, he had only done what Frank
had done on a small scale.
"Half the money is honestly mine," he continued, "honestly made with the aid of honest Union patriots who were willing to sell out the Union behind its back--for one-hundred-percent profit on their goods. Part I made out of my little investment in cotton at the beginning of the war, the cotton I bought cheap and sold for a dollar a pound when the British mills were crying for it.
Part I got from food speculation. Why should I let the Yankees have the fruits of my labor? But the rest did belong to the Confederacy. It came from Confederate cotton which I managed to run through the blockade and sell in Liverpool at sky-high prices. The cotton was given me in good faith to buy leather and rifles and machinery with. And it was taken by me in good, faith to buy the same. My orders were to leave the gold in English banks, under my own name, in order that my credit would be good. You remember when the blockade tightened, I couldn't get a boat out of any Confederate port or into one, so there the money stayed in England. What should I have done? Drawn out all that gold from English banks, like a simpleton, and tried to run it into Wilmington? And let the Yankees capture it? Was it my fault that the blockade got too tight?
Was it my fault that our Cause failed? The money belonged to the Confederacy. Well, there is no Confederacy now--though you'd never know it, to hear some people talk. Whom shall I give the money to? The Yankee government? I should so hate for people to think me a thief."
He removed a leather case from his pocket, extracted a long cigar and smelled it
approvingly, meanwhile watching her with pseudo anxiety as if he hung on her words.
Plague take him, she thought, he's always one jump ahead of me. There is always
something wrong with his arguments but I never can put my finger on just what it is.
"You might," she said with dignity, "distribute it to those who are in need. The Confederacy is gone but there are plenty of Confederates and their families who are starving."
He threw back his head and laughed rudely.
"You are never so charming or so absurd as when you are airing some hypocrisy like that," he cried in frank enjoyment. "Always tell the truth, Scarlett. You can't lie. The Irish are the poorest liars in the world. Come now, be frank. You never gave a damn about the late lamented Confederacy and you care less about the starving Confederates. You'd scream in protest if I even suggested giving away all the money unless I started off by giving you the lion's share."