Gone with the Wind (123 page)

His sudden shift so disconcerted her that she stammered: “What—what—” and inwardly groaned: “Oh, Lord! Now it's coming. I wonder if I can butter him down?”

“I shouldn't have expected either truth or fair dealing from you, knowing you as I do. But foolishly, I trusted you.”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“I think you do. At any rate, you look very guilty. As I was riding along Ivy Street a while ago, on my way to call on you, who should hail me from behind a hedge but Mrs. Ashley Wilkes! Of course, I stopped and chatted with her.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes, we had an enjoyable talk. She told me she had always wanted to let me know how brave she thought I was to have struck a blow for the Confederacy, even at the eleventh hour.”

“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! Melly's a fool. She might have died that night because you acted so heroic.”

“I imagine she would have thought her life given in a good cause. And when I asked her what she was doing in Atlanta she looked quite surprised at my ignorance and
told me that they were living here now and that you had been kind enough to make Mr. Wilkes a partner in your mill.”

“Well, what of it?” questioned Scarlett, shortly.

“When I lent you the money to buy that mill I made one stipulation, to which you agreed, and that was that it should not go to the support of Ashley Wilkes.”

“You are being very offensive. I've paid you back your money and I own the mill and what I do with it is my own business.”

“Would you mind telling me how you made the money to pay back my loan?”

“I made it selling lumber, of course.”

“You made it with the money I lent you to give you your start. That's what you mean. My money is being used to support Ashley. You are a woman quite without honor and if you hadn't repaid my loan, I'd take great pleasure in calling it in now and selling you out at public auction if you couldn't pay.”

He spoke lightly but there was anger flickering in his eyes.

Scarlett hastily carried the warfare into the enemy's territory.

“Why do you hate Ashley so much? I believe you're jealous of him.”

After she had spoken she could have bitten her tongue, for he threw back his head and laughed until she went red with mortification.

“Add conceit to dishonor,” he said. “You'll never get over being the belle of the County will you? You'll always think you're the cutest little trick in shoe leather and that every man you meet is expiring for love of you.”

“I don't either!” she cried hotly. “But I just can't see
why you hate Ashley so much and that's the only explanation I can think of.”

“Well, think something else, pretty charmer, for that's the wrong explanation. And as for hating Ashley— I don't hate him any more than I like him. In fact, my only emotion toward him and his kind is pity.”

“Pity?”

“Yes, and a little contempt. Now, swell up like a gobbler and tell me that he is worth a thousand blackguards like me and that I shouldn't dare be so presumptuous as to feel either pity or contempt for him. And when you have finished swelling, I'll tell you what I mean, if you're interested.”

“Well, I'm not.”

“I shall tell you, just the same, for I can't bear for you to go on nursing your pleasant delusion of my jealousy. I pity him because he ought to be dead and he isn't. And I have a contempt for him because he doesn't know what to do with himself now that his world is gone.”

There was something familiar in the idea he expressed. She had a confused memory of having heard similar words but she could not remember when and where. She did not think very hard about it for her anger was hot.

“If you had your way all the decent men in the South would be dead!”

“And if they had their way, I think Ashley's kind would prefer to be dead. Dead with neat stones above them, saying: ‘Here lies a soldier of the Confederacy, dead for the Southland' or ‘Dulce et decorum est—' or any of the other popular epitaphs.”

“I don't see why!”

“You never see anything that isn't written in letters a
foot high and then shoved under your nose, do you? If they were dead, their troubles would be over, there'd be no problems to face, problems that have no solutions. Moreover, their families would be proud of them through countless generations. And I've heard the dead are happy. Do you suppose Ashley Wilkes is happy?”

“Why, of course—” she began and then she remembered the look in Ashley's eyes recently and stopped.

“Is he happy or Hugh Elsing or Dr. Meade? Any more than my father and your father were happy?”

“Well, perhaps not as happy as they might be, because they've all lost their money.”

He laughed.

“It isn't losing their money, my pet. I tell you it's losing their world—the world they were raised in. They're like fish out of water or cats with wings. They were raised to be certain persons, to do certain things, to occupy certain niches. And those persons and things and niches disappeared forever when General Lee arrived at Appomattox. Oh, Scarlett, don't look so stupid! What is there for Ashley Wilkes to do, now that his home is gone and his plantation taken up for taxes and fine gentlemen are going twenty for a penny? Can he work with his head or his hands? I'll bet you've lost money hand over fist since he took over that mill.”

“I have not!”

“How nice. May I look over your books some Sunday evening when you are at leisure?”

“You can go to the devil and not at your leisure. You can go now, for all I care.”

“My pet, I've been to the devil and he's a very dull fellow. I won't go there again, even for you…. You took my money when you needed it desperately and you used it.
We had an agreement as to how it should be used and you have broken that agreement. Just remember, my precious little cheat, the time will come when you will want to borrow more money from me. You'll want me to bank you, at some incredibly low interest, so you can buy more mills and more mules and build more saloons. And you can whistle for the money.”

“When I need money I'll borrow it from the bank, thank you,” she said coldly, but her breast was heaving with rage.

“Will you? Try to do it. I own plenty of stock in the bank.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I am interested in some honest enterprises.”

“There are other banks—”

“Plenty of them. And if I can manage it, you'll play hell getting a cent from any of them. You can go to the Carpetbag usurers if you want money.”

“I'll go to them with pleasure.”

“You'll go but with little pleasure when you learn their rates of interest. My pretty, there are penalties in the business world for crooked dealing. You should have played straight with me.”

“You're a fine man, aren't you? So rich and powerful yet picking on people who are down, like Ashley and me!”

“Don't put yourself in his class. You aren't down. Nothing will down you. But he is down and he'll stay there unless there's some energetic person behind him, guiding and protecting him as long as he lives. I'm of no mind to have my money used for the benefit of such a person.”

“You didn't mind helping me and I was down and—”

“You were a good risk, my dear, an interesting risk. Why? Because you didn't plump yourself down on your male relatives and sob for the old days. You got out and hustled and now your fortunes are firmly planted on money stolen from a dead man's wallet and money stolen from the Confederacy. You've got murder to your credit, and husband stealing, attempted fornication, lying and sharp dealing and any amount of chicanery that won't bear close inspection. Admirable things, all of them. They show you to be a person of energy and determination and a good money risk. It's entertaining, helping people who help themselves. I'd lend ten thousand dollars without even a note to that old Roman matron, Mrs. Merriwether. She started with a basket of pies and look at her now! A bakery employing half a dozen people, old Grandpa happy with his delivery wagon and that lazy little Creole, René, working hard and liking it…. Or that poor devil, Tommy Wellburn, who does two men's work with half a man's body and does it well or—well, I won't go on and bore you.”

“You do bore me. You bore me to distraction,” said Scarlett coldly, hoping to annoy him and divert him from the ever-unfortunate subject of Ashley. But he only laughed shortly and refused to take up the gauntlet.

“People like them are worth helping. But Ashley Wilkes—bah! His breed is of no use or value in an upside-down world like ours. Whenever the world upends, his kind is the first to perish. And why not? They don't deserve to survive because they won't fight—don't know how to fight. This isn't the first time the world's been upside down and it won't be the last. It's happened before and it'll happen again. And when it does happen, everyone loses everything and everyone is equal. And
then they all start again at taw, with nothing at all. That is, nothing except the cunning of their brains and strength of their hands. But some people, like Ashley, have neither cunning nor strength or, having them, scruple to use them. And so they go under and they should go under. It's a natural law and the world is better off without them. But there are always a hardy few who come through and, given time, they are right back where they were before the world turned over.”

“You've been poor! You just said that your father turned you out without a penny!” said Scarlett, furious. “I should think you'd understand and sympathize with Ashley!”

“I do understand,” said Rhett, “but I'm damned if I sympathize. After the surrender Ashley had much more than I had when I was thrown out. At least, he had friends who took him in, whereas I was Ishmael. But what has Ashley done with himself?”

“If you are comparing him with yourself, you conceited thing, why— He's not like you, thank God! He wouldn't soil his hands as you do, making money with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags and Yankees. He's scrupulous and honorable!”

“But not too scrupulous and honorable to take aid and money from a woman.”

“What else could he have done?”

“Who am I to say? I only know what I did, both when I was thrown out and nowadays. I only know what other men have done. We saw opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are still making the most of it. But the Ashleys of this world have the same chances and don't take them. They just aren't smart, Scarlett, and only the smart deserve to survive.”

She hardly heard what he was saying, for now there was coming back to her the exact memory which had teased her a few minutes before when he first began speaking. She remembered the cold wind that swept the orchard of Tara and Ashley standing by a pile of rails, his eyes looking beyond her. And he said—what? Some funny foreign word that sounded like profanity and had talked of the end of the world. She had not known what he meant then but now bewildered comprehension was coming to her and with it a sick, weary feeling.

“Why, Ashley said—”

“Yes?”

“Once at Tara he said something about the—a—dusk of the gods and about the end of the world and some such foolishness.”

“Ah, the Götterdämmerung!” Rhett's eyes were sharp with interest. “And what else?”

“Oh, I don't remember exactly. I wasn't paying much mind. But—yes—something about the strong coming through and the weak being winnowed out.”

“Ah, so he knows. Then that makes it harder for him. Most of them don't know and will never know. They'll wonder all their lives where the lost enchantment has vanished. They'll simply suffer in proud and incompetent silence. But he understands. He knows he's winnowed out.”

“Oh, he isn't! Not while I've got breath in my body.”

He looked at her quietly and his brown face was smooth.

“Scarlett, how did you manage to get his consent to come to Atlanta and take over the mill? Did he struggle very hard against you?”

She had a quick memory of the scene of Ashley after Gerald's funeral and put it from her.

“Why, of course not,” she replied indignantly. “When I explained to him that I needed his help because I didn't trust that scamp who was running the mill and Frank was too busy to help me and I was going to—well, there was Ella Lorena, you see. He was very glad to help me out.”

“Sweet are the uses of motherhood! So that's how you got around him. Well, you've got him where you want him now, poor devil, as shackled to you by obligations as any of your convicts are by their chains. And I wish you both joy. But, as I said at the beginning of this discussion, you'll never get another cent out of me for any of your little unladylike schemes, my double-dealing lady.”

She was smarting with anger and with disappointment as well. For some time she had been planning to borrow more money from Rhett to buy a lot downtown and start a lumber yard there.

“I can do without your money,” she cried. “I'm making money out of Johnnie Gallegher's mill, plenty of it, now that I don't use free darkies and I have some money out on mortgages and we are coining cash at the store from the darky trade.”

“Yes, so I heard. How clever of you to rook the helpless and the widow and the orphan and the ignorant! But if you must steal, Scarlett, why not steal from the rich and strong instead of the poor and weak? From Robin Hood on down to now, that's been considered highly moral.”

“Because,” said Scarlett shortly, “it's a sight easier and safer to steal—as you call it—from the poor.”

He laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.

“You're a fine honest rogue, Scarlett!”

A rogue! Queer that that term should hurt. She wasn't a rogue, she told herself vehemently. At least, that wasn't what she wanted to be. She wanted to be a great lady. For a moment her mind went swiftly down the years and she saw her mother, moving with a sweet swish of skirts and a faint fragrance of sachet, her small busy hands tireless in the service of others, loved, respected, cherished. And suddenly her heart was sick.