Gone with the Wind (101 page)

Scarlett looked into his smooth unreadable face in confusion and indignation.

“We won't go any further with this and I don't want your money. So, get out!”

“Oh, yes, you do want my money and, as we've gone this far, why stop? Surely there can be no harm in discussing so chaste an idyl—when there hasn't been anything wrong. So Ashley loves you for your mind, your soul, your nobility of character?”

Scarlett writhed at his words. Of course, Ashley loved her for just these things. It was this knowledge that made life endurable, this knowledge that Ashley, bound by honor, loved her from afar for beautiful things deep buried in her that he alone could see. But they did not seem so beautiful when dragged to the light by Rhett, especially in that deceptively smooth voice that covered sarcasm.

“It gives me back my boyish ideals to know that such a love can exist in this naughty world,” he continued. “So there's no touch of the flesh in his love for you? It
would be the same if you were ugly and didn't have that white skin? And if you didn't have those green eyes which make a man wonder just what you would do if he took you in his arms? And a way of swaying your hips, that's an allurement to any man under ninety? And those lips which are—well, I mustn't let my carnal lusts obtrude. Ashley sees none of these things? Or if he sees them, they move him not at all?”

Unbidden, Scarlett's mind went back to that day in the orchard when Ashley's arms shook as he held her, when his mouth was hot on hers as if he would never let her go. She went crimson at the memory and her blush was not lost on Rhett.

“So,” he said and there was a vibrant note almost like anger in his voice. “I see. He loves you for your mind alone.”

How dare he pry with dirty fingers, making the one beautiful sacred thing in her life seem vile? Coolly, determinedly, he was breaking down the last of her reserves, and the information he wanted was forthcoming.

“Yes, he does!” she cried, pushing back the memory of Ashley's lips.

“My dear, he doesn't even know you've got a mind. If it was your mind that attracted him, he would not need to struggle against you, as he must have done to keep this love so—shall we say ‘holy'? He could rest easily for, after all, a man can admire a woman's mind and soul and still be an honorable gentleman and true to his wife. But it must be difficult for him to reconcile the honor of the Wilkeses with coveting your body as he does.”

“You judge everybody's mind by your own vile one!”

“Oh, I've never denied coveting you, if that's what you mean. But, thank God, I'm not bothered about matters
of honor. What I want I take if I can get it, and so I wrestle neither with angels nor devils. What a merry hell you must have made for Ashley! Almost I can be sorry for him.”

“I—I make a hell for him?”

“Yes, you! There you are, a constant temptation to him, but like most of his breed he prefers what passes in these parts as honor to any amount of love. And it looks to me as if the poor devil now has neither love nor honor to warm himself!”

“He has love!… I mean, he loves me!”

“Does he? Then answer me this and we are through for the day and you can take the money and throw it in the gutter for all I care.”

Rhett rose to his feet and threw his half-smoked cigar into the spittoon. There was about his movements the same pagan freedom and leashed power Scarlett had noted that night Atlanta fell, something sinister and a little frightening. “If he loved you, then why in hell did he permit you to come to Atlanta to get the tax money? Before I'd let a woman I loved do that, I'd—”

“He didn't know! He had no idea that I—”

“Doesn't it occur to you that he should have known?” There was barely suppressed savagery in his voice. “Loving you as you say he does, he should have known just what you would do when you were desperate. He should have killed you rather than let you come up here—and to me, of all people! God in Heaven!”

“But he didn't know!”

“If he didn't guess it without being told, he'll never know anything about you and your precious mind.”

How unfair he was! As if Ashley was a mind reader! As if Ashley could have stopped her, even had he known!
But, she knew suddenly, Ashley could have stopped her. The faintest intimation from him, in the orchard, that some day things might be different and she would never have thought of going to Rhett. A word of tenderness, even a parting caress when she was getting on the train, would have held her back. But he had only talked of honor. Yet—was Rhett right? Should Ashley have known her mind? Swiftly she put the disloyal thought from her. Of course, he didn't suspect. Ashley would never suspect that she would even think of doing anything so immoral. Ashley was too fine to have such thoughts. Rhett was just trying to spoil her love. He was trying to tear down what was most precious to her. Some day, she thought viciously, when the store was on its feet and the mill doing nicely and she had money, she would make Rhett Butler pay for the misery and humiliation he was causing her.

He was standing over her, looking down at her, faintly amused. The emotion which had stirred him was gone.

“What does it all matter to you anyway?” she asked. “It's my business and Ashley's and not yours.”

He shrugged.

“Only this. I have a deep and impersonal admiration for your endurance, Scarlett, and I do not like to see your spirit crushed beneath too many millstones. There's Tara. That's a man-sized job in itself. There's your sick father added on. He'll never be any help to you. And the girls and the darkies. And now you've taken on a husband and probably Miss Pittypat, too. You've enough burdens without Ashley Wilkes and his family on your hands.”

“He's not on my hands. He helps—”

“Oh, for God's sake,” he said impatiently. “Don't let's
have any more of that. He's no help. He's on your hands and he'll be on them, or on somebody's, till he dies. Personally, I'm sick of him as a topic of conversation…. How much money do you want?”

Vituperative words rushed to her lips. After all his insults, after dragging from her those things which were most precious to her and trampling on them, he still thought she would take his money!

But the words were checked unspoken. How wonderful it would be to scorn his offer and order him out of the store! But only the truly rich and the truly secure could afford this luxury. So long as she was poor, just so long would she have to endure such scenes as this. But when she was rich—oh, what a beautiful warming thought that was!—when she was rich, she wouldn't stand anything she didn't like, do without anything she desired or even be polite to people unless they pleased her.

I shall tell them all to go to Halifax, she thought, and Rhett Butler will be the first one!

The pleasure in the thought brought a sparkle into her green eyes and a half-smile to her lips. Rhett smiled too.

“You're a pretty person, Scarlett,” he said. “Especially when you are meditating devilment. And just for the sight of that dimple I'll buy you a baker's dozen of mules if you want them.”

The front door opened and the counter boy entered, picking his teeth with a quill. Scarlett rose, pulled her shawl about her and tied her bonnet strings firmly under her chin. Her mind was made up.

“Are you busy this afternoon? Can you come with me now?” she asked.

“Where?”

“I want you to drive to the mill with me. I promised Frank I wouldn't drive out of town by myself.”

“To the mill in this rain?”

“Yes, I want to buy that mill now, before you change your mind.”

He laughed so loudly the boy behind the counter started and looked at him curiously.

“Have you forgotten you are married? Mrs. Kennedy can't afford to be seen driving out into the country with that Butler reprobate, who isn't received in the best parlors. Have you forgotten your reputation?”

“Reputation, fiddle-dee-dee! I want that mill before you change your mind or Frank finds out that I'm buying it. Don't be a slow poke, Rhett. What's a little rain? Let's hurry.”

*     *     *

That sawmill! Frank groaned every time he thought of it, cursing himself for ever mentioning it to her. It was bad enough for her to sell her earrings to Captain Butler (of all people!) and buy the mill without even consulting her own husband about it, but it was worse still that she did not turn it over to him to operate. That looked bad. As if she did not trust him or his judgment.

Frank, in common with all men he knew, felt that a wife should be guided by her husband's superior knowledge, should accept his opinions in full and have none of her own. He would have given most women their own way. Women were such funny little creatures and it never hurt to humor their small whims. Mild and gentle by nature, it was not in him to deny a wife much. He would have enjoyed gratifying the foolish notions of some soft little person and scolding her lovingly for her
stupidity and extravagance. But the things Scarlett set her mind on were unthinkable.

That sawmill, for example. It was the shock of his life when she told him with a sweet smile, in answer to his questions, that she intended to run it herself. “Go into the lumber business myself,” was the way she put it. Frank would never forget the horror of that moment. Go into business for herself! It was unthinkable. There were no women in business in Atlanta. In fact, Frank had never heard of a woman in business anywhere. If women were so unfortunate as to be compelled to make a little money to assist their families in these hard times, they made it in quiet womanly ways—baking as Mrs. Merriwether was doing, or painting china and sewing and keeping boarders, like Mrs. Elsing and Fanny, or teaching school like Mrs. Meade or giving music lessons like Mrs. Bonnell. These ladies made money but they kept themselves at home while they did it, as a woman should. But for a woman to leave the protection of her home and venture out into the rough world of men, competing with them in business, rubbing shoulders with them, being exposed to insult and gossip…. Especially when she wasn't forced to do it, when she had a husband amply able to provide for her!

Frank had hoped she was only teasing or playing a joke on him, a joke of questionable taste, but he soon found she meant what she said. She did operate the sawmill. She rose earlier than he did to drive out Peachtree road and frequently did not come home until long after he had locked up the store and returned to Aunt Pitty's for supper. She drove the long miles to the mill with only the disapproving Uncle Peter to protect
her and the woods were full of free niggers and Yankee riffraff. Frank couldn't go with her, the store took all of his time, but when he protested, she said shortly: “If I don't keep an eye on that slick scamp, Johnson, he'll steal my lumber and sell it and put the money in his pocket. When I can get a good man to run the mill for me, then I won't have to go out there so often. Then I can spend my time in town selling lumber.”

Selling lumber in town! That was worst of all. She frequently did take a day off from the mill and peddle lumber and, on those days, Frank wished he could hide in the dark back room of his store and see no one. His wife selling lumber!

And people were talking terribly about her. Probably about him too, for permitting her to behave in so unwomanly a fashion. It embarrassed him to face his customers over the counter and hear them say: “I saw Mrs. Kennedy a few minutes ago over at…” Everyone took pains to tell him what she did. Everyone was talking about what happened over where the new hotel was being built. Scarlett had driven up just as Tommy Wellburn was buying some lumber from another man and she climbed down out of the buggy among the rough Irish masons who were laying the foundations, and told Tommy briefly that he was being cheated. She said her lumber was better and cheaper too, and to prove it she ran up a long column of figures in her head and gave him an estimate then and there. It was bad enough that she had intruded herself among strange rough workmen, but it was still worse for a woman to show publicly that she could do mathematics like that. When Tommy accepted her estimate and gave her the order, Scarlett had not taken her departure speedily and meekly but had idled
about, talking to Johnnie Gallegher, the foreman of the Irish workers, a hard-bitten little gnome of a man who had a very bad reputation. The town talked about it for weeks.

On top of everything else, she was actually making money out of the mill, and no man could feel right about a wife who succeeded in so unwomanly an activity. Nor did she turn over the money or any part of it to him to use in the store. Most of it went to Tara and she wrote interminable letters to Will Benteen telling him just how it should be spent. Furthermore, she told Frank that if the repairs at Tara could ever be completed, she intended to lend out her money on mortgages.

“My! My!” moaned Frank whenever he thought of this. A woman had no business even knowing what a mortgage was.

Scarlett was full of plans these days and each one of them seemed worse to Frank than the previous one. She even talked of building a saloon on the property where her warehouse had been until Sherman burned it. Frank was no teetotaler but he feverishly protested against the idea. Owning saloon property was a bad business, an unlucky business, almost as bad as renting to a house of prostitution. Just why it was bad, he could not explain to her and to his lame arguments she said “Fiddle-dee-dee!”

“Saloons are always good tenants. Uncle Henry said so,” she told him. “They always pay their rent and, look here, Frank, I could put up a cheap saloon out of poor-grade lumber I can't sell and get good rent for it, and with the rent money and the money from the mill and what I could get from mortgages, I could buy some more sawmills.”

“Sugar, you don't need any more sawmills!” cried
Frank, appalled. “What you ought to do is sell the one you've got. It's wearing you out and you know what trouble you have keeping free darkies at work there—”