Gone With the Wind, Page 74

  He removed a leather case from his pocket, extracted a long cigar and smelled it approvingly, meanwhile watching her with pseudo anxiety as if he hung on her words.

  Plague take him, she thought, he's always one jump ahead of me. There is always something wrong with his arguments but I never can put my finger on just what it is.

  "You might," she said with dignity, "distribute it to those who are in need. The Confederacy is gone but there are plenty of Confederates and their families who are starving."

  He threw back his head and laughed rudely.

  "You are never so charming or so absurd as when you are airing some hypocrisy like that," he cried in frank enjoyment. "Always tell the truth, Scarlett. You can't lie. The Irish are the poorest liars in the world. Come now, be frank. You never gave a damn about the late lamented Confederacy and you care less about the starving Confederates. You'd scream in protest if I even suggested giving away all the money unless I started off by giving you the lion's share."

  "I don't want your money," she began, trying to be coldly dignified.

  "Oh, don't you! Your palm is itching to beat the band this minute. If I showed you a quarter, you'd leap on it."

  If you have come here to insult me and laugh at my poverty, I will wish you good day," she retorted, trying to rid her lap of the heavy ledger so she might rise and make her words more impressive. Instantly, he was on his feet bending over her, laughing as he pushed her back into her chair.

  "When will you ever get over losing your temper when you hear the truth? You never mind speaking the truth about other people, so why should you mind hearing it about yourself? I'm not insulting you. I think acquisitiveness is a very fine quality."

  She was not sure what acquisitiveness meant but as he praised it she felt slightly mollified.

  "I didn't come to gloat over your poverty but to wish you long life and happiness in your marriage. By the way, what did sister Sue think of your larceny?"

  "My what?"

  "Your stealing Frank from under her nose."

  "I did not --"

  "Well, we won't quibble about the word. What did she say?"

  "She said nothing," said Scarlett. His eyes danced as they gave her the lie.

  "How unselfish of her. Now, let's hear about your poverty. Surely I have the right to know, after your little trip out to the jail not long ago. Hasn't Frank as much money as you hoped?"

  There was no evading his impudence. Either she would have to put up with it or ask him to leave. And now she did not want him to leave. His words were barbed but they were the barbs of truth. He knew what she had done and why she had done it and he did not seem to think the less of her for it. And though his questions were unpleasantly blunt, they seemed actuated by a friendly interest. He was one person to whom she could tell the truth. That would be, a relief, for it had been so long since she had told anyone the truth about herself and her motives. Whenever she spoke her mind everyone seemed to be shocked. Talking to Rhett was comparable only to one thing, the feeling of ease and comfort afforded by a pair of old slippers after dancing in a pair too tight.

  "Didn't you get the money for the taxes? Don't tell me the wolf is still at the door of Tara." There was a different tone in his voice.

  She looked up to meet his dark eyes and caught an expression which startled and puzzled her at first, and then made her suddenly smile, a sweet and charming smile which was seldom on her face these days. What a perverse wretch he was, but how nice he could be at times! She knew now that the real reason for his call was not to tease her but to make sure she had gotten the money for which she had been so desperate. She knew now that he had hurried to her as soon as he was released, without the slightest appearance of hurry, to tend her the money if she still needed it. And yet he would torment and insult her and deny that such was his intent, should she accuse him. He was quite beyond all comprehension. Did he really care about her, more than he was willing to admit? Or did he have some other motive? Probably the latter, she thought. But who could tell? He did such strange things sometimes.

  "No," she said, "the wolf isn't at the door any longer. I -- I got the money."

  "But not without a struggle, I'll warrant. Did you manage to restrain yourself until you got the wedding ring on your finger?"

  She tried not to smile at his accurate summing up of her conduct but she could not help dimpling. He seated himself again, sprawling his long legs comfortably.

  "Well, tell me about your poverty. Did Frank, the brute, mislead you about his prospects? He should be soundly thrashed for taking advantage of a helpless female. Come, Scarlett. tell me everything. You should have no secrets from me. Surely, I know the worst about you."

  "Oh, Rhett. you're the worst -- well, I don't know what! No, he didn't exactly fool me but --" Suddenly it became a pleasure to unburden herself. "Rhett, if Frank would just collect the money people owe him, I wouldn't be worried about anything. But, Rhett, fifty people owe him and he won't press them. He's so thin skinned. He says a gentleman can't do that to another gentleman. And it may be months and may be never before we get the money."

  "Well, what of it? Haven't you enough to eat on until he does collect?"

  "Yes, but -- well, as a matter of fact, I could use a little money right now." Her eyes brightened as she thought of the mill. Perhaps --

  "What for? More taxes?"

  "Is that any of your business?"

  "Yes, because you are getting ready to touch me for a loan. Oh, I know all the approaches. And I'll lend it to you -- without, my dear Mrs. Kennedy, that charming collateral you offered me a short while ago. Unless, of course, you insist."

  "You are the coarsest -- "

  "Not at all. I merely wanted to set your mind at ease. I knew you'd be worried about that point. Not much worried but a little. And I'm willing to lend you the money. But I do want to know how you are going to spend it. I have that right, I believe. If it's to buy you pretty frocks or a carriage, take it with my blessing. But if it's to buy a new pair of breeches for Ashley Wilkes, I fear I must decline to lend it."

  She was hot with sudden rage and she stuttered until words came.

  "Ashley Wilkes has never taken a cent from me! I couldn't make him take a cent if he were starving! You don't understand him, how honorable, how proud he is! Of course, you can't understand him, being what you are --"

  "Don't let's begin calling names. I could call you a few that would match any you could think of for me. You forget that I have been keeping up with you through Miss Pittypat, and the dear soul tells all she knows to any sympathetic listener. I know that Ashley has been at Tara ever since he came home from Rock Island. I know that you have even put up with having his wife around, which must have been a strain on you."

  "Ashley is --"

  "Oh, yes," he said, waving his hand negligently. "Ashley is too sublime for my earthy comprehension. But please don't forget I was an interested witness to your tender scene with him at Twelve Oaks and something tells me he hasn't changed since then. And neither have you. He didn't cut so sublime a figure that day, if I remember rightly. And I don't think the figure he cuts now is much better. Why doesn't he take his family and get out and find work? And stop living at Tara? Of course, it's just a whim of mine, but I don't intend to tend you a cent for Tara to help support him. Among men, there's a very unpleasant name for men who permit women to support them."

  "How dare you say such things? He's been working like a field hand!" For all her rage, her heart was wrung by the memory of Ashley splitting fence rails.

  "And worth his weight in gold, I dare say. What a hand he must be with the manure and --"

  "He's --"

  "Oh, yes, I know. Let's grant that he does the best he can but I don't imagine he's much help. You'll never make a farm hand out of a Wilkes -- or anything else that's useful. The breed is purely ornamental. Now, quiet your ruffled feathers and overlook my boorish remarks about the proud and honorable Ashley. Strange how these illusions will persis
t even in women as hard headed as you are. How much money do you want and what do you want it for?"

  When she did not answer he repeated:

  "What do you want it for? And see if you can manage to tell me the truth. It will do as well as a lie. In fact, better, for if you lie to me, I'll be sure to find it out, and think how embarrassing that would be. Always remember this, Scarlett, I can stand anything from you but a lie -- your dislike for me, your tempers, all your vixenish ways, but not a lie. Now what do you want it for?"

  Raging as she was at his attack on Ashley, she would have given anything to spit on him and throw his offer of money proudly into his mocking face. For a moment she almost did, but the cold hand of common sense held her back. She swallowed her anger with poor grace and tried to assume an expression of pleasant dignity. He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs toward the stove.

  "If there's one thing in the world that gives me more amusement than anything else," he remarked, "it's the sight of your mental struggles when a matter of principle is laid up against something practical like money. Of course, I know the practical in you will always win, but I keep hanging around to see if your better nature won't triumph some day. And when that day comes I shall pack my bag and leave Atlanta forever. There are too many women whose better natures are always triumphing. ... Well, let's get back to business. How much and what for?"

  "I don't know quite how much I'll need," she said sulkily. "But I want to buy a sawmill -- and I think I can get it cheap. And I'll need two wagons and two mules. I want good mules, too. And a horse and buggy for my own use."

  "A sawmill?"

  "Yes, and if you'll lend me the money, I'll give you a half-interest in it."

  "Whatever would I do with a sawmill?"

  "Make money! We can make loads of money. Or I'll pay you interest on the loan -- let's see, what is good interest?"

  "Fifty per cent is considered very fine."

  "Fifty -- oh, but you are joking! Stop laughing, you devil. I'm serious."

  "That's why I'm laughing. I wonder if anyone but me realizes what goes on in that head back of your deceptively sweet face."

  "Well, who cares? Listen, Rhett, and see if this doesn't sound like good business to you. Frank told me about this man who has a sawmill, a little one out Peachtree road, and be wants to sell it. He's got to have cash money pretty quick and he'll sell it cheap. There aren't many sawmills around here now, and the way people are rebuilding -- why, we could sell lumber sky high. The man will stay and run the mill for a wage. Frank told me about it. Frank would buy the mill himself if he had the money. I guess he was intending buying it with the money he gave me for the taxes."

  "Poor Frank! What is he going to say when you tell him you've bought it yourself right out from under him? And how are you going to explain my lending you the money without compromising your reputation?"

  Scarlett had given no thought to this, so intent was she upon the money the mill would bring in.

  "Well, I just won't tell him."

  "He'll know you didn't pick it off a bush."

  "I'll tell him -- why, yes, I'll tell him I sold you my diamond earbobs. And I will give them to you, too. That'll be my collat -- my whatchucallit."

  "I wouldn't take your earbobs."

  "I don't want them. I don't like them. They aren't really mine, anyway."

  "Whose are they?"

  Her mind went swiftly back to the still hot noon with the country hush deep about Tara and the dead man in blue sprawled in the hall.

  "They were left with me -- by someone who's dead. They're mine all right. Take them. I don't want them. I'd rather have the money for them."

  "Good Lord!" he cried impatiently. "Don't you ever think of anything but money?"

  "No," she replied frankly, turning hard green eyes upon him. "And if you'd been through what I have, you wouldn't either. I've found out that money is the most important thing in the world and, as God is my witness, I don't ever intend to be without it again."

  She remembered the hot sun, the soft red earth under her sick head, the niggery smell of the cabin behind the ruins of Twelve Oaks, remembered the refrain her heart had beaten: I'll never be hungry again. I'll never be hungry again,"

  I'm going to have money some day, lots of it, so I can have anything I want to eat. And then there'll never be any hominy or dried peas on my table. And I'm going to have pretty clothes and all of them are going to be silk --"

  "All?"

  "All," she said shortly, not even troubling to blush at his implication. "I'm going to have money enough so the Yankees can never take Tara away from me. And I'm going to have a new roof for Tara and a new barn and fine mules for plowing and more cotton than you ever saw. And Wade isn't ever going to know what it means to do without the things he needs. Never! He's going to have everything in the world. And all my family, they aren't ever going to be hungry again. I mean it. Every word. You don't understand, you're such a selfish hound. You've never had the Carpetbaggers trying to drive you out. You've never been cold and ragged and had to break your back to keep from starving!"

  He said quietly: "I was in the Confederate Army for eight months. I don't know any better place for starving."

  "The army! Bah! You've never had to pick cotton and weed corn. You've-- Don't you laugh at me!"

  His hands were on hers again as her voice rose harshly.

  "I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at the difference in what you look and what you really are. And I was remembering the first time I ever saw you, at the barbecue at the Wilkes'. You had on a green dress and little green slippers, and you were knee deep in men and quite full of yourself. I'll wager you didn't know then how many pennies were in a dollar. There was only one idea in your whole mind then and that was ensnaring Ash --"

  She jerked her hands away from him.

  "Rhett, if we are to get on at all, you'll have to stop talking about Ashley Wilkes. We'll always fall out about him, because you can't understand him."

  "I suppose you understand him like a book," said Rhett maliciously. "No, Scarlett, if I am to lend you the money I reserve the right to discuss Ashley Wilkes in any terms I care to. I waive the right to collect interest on my loan but not that right. And there are a number of things about that young man I'd like to know."

  "I do not have to discuss him with you," she answered shortly.

  "Oh, but you do! I hold the purse strings, you see. Some day when you are rich, you can have the power to do the same to others. ... It's obvious that you still care about him --"

  "I do not."

  "Oh, it's so obvious from the way you rush to his defense. You -- "

  "I won't stand having my friends sneered at."

  "Well, we'll let that pass for the moment. Does he still care for you or did Rock Island make him forget? Or perhaps he's learned to appreciate what a jewel of a wife he has?"

  At the mention of Melanie, Scarlett began to breathe hard and could scarcely restrain herself from crying out the whole story, that only honor kept Ashley with Melanie. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it.

  "Oh. So he still hasn't enough sense to appreciate Mrs. Wilkes? And the rigors of prison didn't dim his ardor for you?"

  "I see no need to discuss the subject."

  "I wish to discuss it," said Rhett. There was a low note in his voice which Scarlett did not understand but did not like to hear. "And, by God, I will discuss it and I expect you to answer me. So he's still in love with you?"

  "Well, what if he is?" cried Scarlett, goaded. "I don't care to discuss him with you because you can't understand him or his kind of love. The only kind of love you know about is just -- well, the kind you carry on with creatures like that Watling woman."

  "Oh," said Rhett softly. "So I am only capable of carnal lusts?"

  "Well, you know it's true."

  "Now I appreciate your hesitance in discussing the matter with me. My unclean hands and lips besmirch the purity of his love."

  "
Well, yes -- something like that."

  "I'm interested in this pure love --"

  "Don't be so nasty, Rhett Butler. If you are vile enough to think there's ever been anything wrong between us --"

  "Oh, the thought never entered my head, really. That's why it all interests me. Just why hasn't there been anything wrong between you?"

  "If you think that Ashley would --"

  "Ah, so it's Ashley, and not you, who has fought the fight for purity. Really, Scarlett, you should not give yourself away so easily."

  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 idyll -- 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.