What a silly thing to say to a man, thought Scarlett, ready to giggle with relief. Why, she's no more than a bluestocking and everyone knows what menthink of bluestockings.The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about him, and then gradually lead the conversation around to yourself—and keep it there.Scarlett would have felt some cause for alarm if Melanie had been saying:“How wonderful you are!”or“How do you ever think of such things?My little ole brain would bust if I even tried to think about them!”But here she was, with a man at her feet, talking as seriously as if she were in church.The prospect looked brighter to Scarlett, so bright in fact that she turned beaming eyes on Charles and smiled from pure joy.Enraptured at this evidence of her affection, he grabbed up her fan and plied it so enthusiastically her hair began to blow about untidily.
“Ashley, you have not favored us with your opinion,”said Jim Tarleton, turning from the group of shouting men, and with an apology Ashley excused himself and rose. There was no one there so handsome, thought Scarlett, as she marked how graceful was his negligent pose and how the sun gleamed on his gold hair and mustache.Even the older men stopped to listen to his words.
“Why, gentlemen, if Georgia fights, I'll go with her. Why else would I have joined the Troop?”he said.His gray eyes opened wide and their drowsiness disappeared in an intensity that Scarlett had never seen before.“But, like Father, I hope the Yankees will let us go in peace and that there will be no fighting—”He held up his hand with a smile, as a babel of voices from the Fontaine and Tarleton boys began.“Yes, yes, I know we've been insulted and lied to—but if we'd been in the Yankees'shoes and they were trying to leave the Union, how would we have acted?Pretty much the same.We wouldn't have liked it.”
“There he goes again,”thought Scarlett.“Always putting himself in the other fellow's shoes.”To her, there was never but one fair side to an argument. Sometimes, there was no understanding Ashley.
“Let's don't be too hot headed and let's don't have any war. Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars.And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about.”
Scarlett sniffed. Lucky for Ashley that he had an unassailable reputation for courage, or else there'd be trouble.As she thought this, the clamor of dissenting voices rose up about Ashley, indignant, fiery.
Under the arbor, the deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville punched India.
“What's it all about?What are they saying?”
“War!”shouted India, cupping her hand to his ear.“They want to fight the Yankees!”
“War, is it?”he cried, fumbling about him for his cane and heaving himself out of his chair with more energy than he had shown in years.“I'll tell'um about war. I've been there.”It was not often that Mr.McRae had the opportunity to talk about war, the way his women folks shushed him.
He stumped rapidly to the group, waving his cane and shouting and, because he could not hear the voices about him, he soon had undisputed possession of the field.
“You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You don't want to fight.I fought and I know.Went out in the Seminole War and was a big enough fool to go to the Mexican War, too.You all don't know what war is.You think it's riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero.Well, it ain't.No, sir!It's going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet.And if it ain't measles and pneumonia, it's your bowels.Yes sir, what war does to a man's bowels—dysentery and things like that—”
The ladies were pink with blushes. Mr.McRae was a reminder of a cruder era, like Grandma Fontaine and her embarrassingly loud belches, an era everyone would like to forget.
“Run get your grandpa,”hissed one of the old gentleman's daughters to a young girl standing near by.“I declare,”she whispered to the fluttering matrons about her,“he gets worse every day. Would you believe it, this very morning he said to Mary—and she's only sixteen:‘Now, Missy……'”And the voice went off into a whisper as the granddaughter slipped out to try to induce Mr.McRae to return to his seat in the shade.
Of all the group that milled about under the trees, girls smiling excitedly, men talking impassionedly, there was only one who seemed calm. Scarlett's eyes turned to Rhett Butler, who leaned against a tree, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets.He stood alone, since Mr.Wilkes had left his side, and had uttered no word as the conversation grew hotter.The red lips under theclose-clipped black mustache curled down and there was a glint of amused contempt in his black eyes—contempt, as if he listened to the braggings of children.A very disagreeable smile, Scarlett thought.He listened quietly until Stuart Tarleton, his red hair tousled and his eyes gleaming, repeated:“Why, we could lick them in a month!Gentlemen always fight better than rabble.A month—why, one battle—”
“Gentlemen,”said Rhett Butler, in a fiat drawl that bespoke his Charleston birth, not moving from his position against the tree or taking his hands from his pockets,“may I say a word?”
There was contempt in his manner as in his eyes, contempt overlaid with an air of courtesy that somehow burlesqued their own manners.
The group turned toward him and accorded him the politeness due an outsider.
“Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there's not a cannon factory south of the Mason-Dixon Line?Or how few iron foundries there are in the South?Or woolen mills or cotton factories or tanneries?Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad?But—of course—you gentlemen have thought of these things.”
“Why, he means the boys are a passel of fools!”thought Scarlett indignantly, the hot blood coming to her cheeks.