“Do you expect me to fly into a rage at that? I am sorry to disappoint you. You can’t make memad by calling me names that are true. Certainly I’m a rascal, and why
not? It’s a free country anda man may be a rascal if he chooses. It’s only hypocrites like you, my dear lady, just as black atheart but trying to hide it, who
become enraged when called by their right names.”
She was helpless before his calm for she had never beforea police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind
metanyone who was so completely impregnable. Her weapons of scorn, coldness
and abuse blunted inher hands, for nothing she could say would shame him. It had been her experience that the liar wasthe hottest to defend his veracity, the coward
his courage, the ill-bred his gentlemanliness, and thecad his honor. But not Rhett. He admitted everything and laughed and dared her to say more.
He came and went during these months, arriving unheralded and leaving without saying good-by. Scarlett never discovered just what business brought him to Atlanta,
for few other blockadersfound it necessary to come so far away from the coast. They landed their cargoes at Wilmington orCharleston, where they were met by swarms of
merchants and speculators from all over the Southwho assembled to buy blockaded goods at auction. It would have pleased her to think that he madethese trips to see
her, but even her abnormal vanity refused to believe this. If he had ever oncemade love to her, seemed jealous of the other men who crowded about her, even tried to
hold herhand or begged for a picture or a handkerchief to cherish, she would have thought triumphantly hehad been caught by her charms. But he remained annoyingly
unloverlike and, worst of all, seemedto see through all her maneuverings to bring him to his knees.
Whenever he came to town, there was a feminine fluttering. Not only did the romantic aura ofthe dashing blockader hang about him but there was also the titillating
element of the wicked andthe forbidden. He had such a bad reputation! And every time the matrons of Atlanta gatheredtogether to gossip, his reputation grew worse,
which only made him all the more glamorous to theyoung girls. As most of them were quite innocent, they had heard little more than that he was“quite loose with
women”—and exactly how a man went about the business of being “loose” theydid not know. They also heard whispers that no girt was safe with him. With such a
reputation, itwas strange that he had never so much as kissed the hand of an unmarried girl since he firstappeared in Atlanta. But that only served to make him more
mysterious and more exciting.
Outside of the army heroes, he was the most talked-about man in Atlanta. Everyone knew indetail how he had been expelled from West Point for drunkenness and
“something about women.”
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