He smiled.
“In all these months since I’ve been home I’ve only heard of one person, Rhett Butler, who actually has money,” he said.
Aunt Pittypat had written Melanie the week before that Rhett was back in Atlanta with a carriage and two fine horses and pocketfuls of greenbacks. She had intimated, however, that he didn’t come by them honestly. Aunt Pitty had a theory, largely shared by Atlanta, that Rhett had managed to get away with the mythical millions of the Confederate treasury.
“Don’t let’s talk about him,” said Scarlett shortly. “He’s a skunk if ever there was one. What’s to become of us all?”
Ashley put down the axe and looked away and his eyes seemed to be journeying to some far-off country where she could not follow.
“I wonder,” he said. “I wonder not only what will become of us at Tara but what will become of everybody in the South.”
She felt like snapping out abruptly: “To hell with everybody in the South! What about us?” but she remained silent because the tired feeling was back on her more strongly than ever. Ashley wasn’t being any help at all.
“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven’t are winnowed out. At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung.”
“A what?”
“A dusk of the gods. Unfortunately, we Southerners did think we were gods.”
“For Heaven’s sake, Ashley Wilkes! Don’t stand there and talk nonsense at me when it’s us who are going to be winnowed out!”
Something of her exasperated weariness seemed to penetrate his mind, called it back from its wanderings, for he raised her hands with tenderness and, turning them palm up, looked at the calluses.
“These are the most beautiful hands I know,” he said and he kissed each palm lightly. “They are beautiful because they are strong and every callus is a medal, Scarlett, every blister an award for bravery and unselfishness. They’ve been roughened for all of us, your father, the girls, Melanie, the baby, the negroes and for me. My dear, I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Here stands an impractical fool talking tommyrot about dead gods when living people are in danger.’ Isn’t that true?”
She nodded, wishing he would keep on holding her hands forever, but he dropped them.
“And you came to me, hoping I could help you. Well, I can’t.”
His eyes were bitter as he looked toward the axe and the pile of logs.
“My home is gone and all the money that I so took for granted I never realized I had it. And I am fitted for nothing in this world, for the world I belonged in has gone. I can’t help you, Scarlett, except by learning with as good grace as possible to be a clumsy farmer. And that won’t keep Tara for you. Don’t you think I realize the bitterness of our situation, living here on your charity – Oh, yes, Scarlett, your charity. I can never repay you for what you’ve done for me and for mine out of the kindness of your heart. I realize it more acutely every day. And every day I see more clearly how helpless I am to cope with what has come on us all – Every day my accursed shrinking from realities makes it harder for me to face the new realities. Do you know what I mean?”
She nodded. She had no very clear idea what he meant but she clung breathlessly on his words. This was the first time he had ever spoken to her of the things he was thinking when he seemed so remote from her. It excited her as if she were on the brink of a discovery.
“It’s a curse – this not wanting to look on naked realities. Until the war, life was never more real to me than a shadow show on a curtain. And I preferred it so. I do not like the outlines of things to be too sharp. I like them gently blurred, a little hazy.”
He stopped and smiled faintly, shivering a little as the cold wind went through his shirt.
“In other words, Scarlett, I am a coward.”
His talk of shadow shows and hazy outlines conveyed no meaning to her but his last words were in language she could understand. She knew they were untrue. Cowardice was not in him. Every line of his slender body spoke of generations of brave and gallant men and Scarlett knew his war record by heart.
“Why, that’s not so! Would a coward have climbed on the cannon at Gettysburg and rallied the men? Would the General himself have written Melanie a letter about a coward? And – ”
“That’s not courage,” he said tiredly. “Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battle field when it’s be brave or else be killed. I’m talking of something else. And my kind of cowardice is infinitely worse than if I had run the first time I heard a cannon fired.”