“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 lend 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 persist 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 he 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