“I don’t like your collateral. I’m no planter. What else have you to offer?”
Well, she had come to it at last. Now for it! She drew a deep breath and met his eyes squarely, all coquetry and airs gone as her spirit rushed out to grapple that which she feared most.
“I-I have myself.”
“Yes?”
Her jaw line tightened to squareness and her eyes went emerald.
“You remember that night on Aunt Pitty’s porch, during the siege? You said-you said then that you wanted me.”
He leaned back carelessly in his chair and looked into her tense face and his own dark face was inscrutable. Something flickered behind his eyes but he said nothing.
“You said-you said you’d never wanted a woman as much as you wanted me. If you still want me, you can have me. Rhett, I’ll do anything you say but, for God’s sake, write me a draft for the money! My word’s good. I swear it. I won’t go back on it. I’ll put it in writing if you like.”
He looked at her oddly, still inscrutable and as she hurried on she could not tell if he were amused or repelled. If he would only say something, anything! She felt her cheeks getting hot.
“I have got to have the money soon, Rhett. They’ll turn us out in the road and that damned overseer of Father’s will own the place and-”
“Just a minute. What makes you think I still want you? What makes you think you are worth three hundred dollars? Most women don’t come that high.”
She blushed to her hair line and her humiliation was complete.
“Why are you doing this? Why not let the farm go and live at Miss Pittypat’s. You own half that house.”
“Name of God!” she cried. “Are you a fool? I can’t let Tara go. It’s home. I won’t let it go. Not while I’ve got breath left in me!”
“The Irish,” said he, lowering his chair back to level and removing his hands from his pockets, “are the damnedest race. They put so much emphasis on so many wrong things. Land, for instance. And every bit of earth is just like every other bit. Now, let me get this straight, Scarlett. You are coming to me with a business proposition. I’ll give you three hundred dollars and you’ll become my mistress.”
“Yes.”
Now that the repulsive word had been said, she felt somehow easier and hope awoke in her again. He had said “I’ll give you.” There was a diabolic gleam in his eyes as if something amused him greatly.
“And yet, when I had the effrontery to make you this same proposition, you turned me out of the house. And also you called me a number of very hard names and mentioned in passing that you didn’t want a ‘passel of brats.’ No, my dear, I’m not rubbing it in. I’m only wondering at the peculiarities of your mind. You wouldn’t do it for your own pleasure but you will to keep the wolf away from the door. It proves my point that all virtue is merely a matter of prices.”
“Oh, Rhett, how you run on! If you want to insult me, go on and do it but give me the money.”
She was breathing easier now. Being what he was, Rhett would naturally want to torment and insult her as much as possible to pay her back for past slights and for her recent attempted trickery. Well, she could stand it. She could stand anything. Tara was worth it all. For a brief moment it was mid-summer and the afternoon skies were blue and she lay drowsily in the thick clover of Tara’s lawn, looking up at the billowing cloud castles, the fragrance of white blossoms in her nose and the pleasant busy humming of bees in her ears. Afternoon and hush and the far-off sound of the wagons coming in from the spiraling red fields. Worth it all, worth more.
Her head went up.
“Are you going to give me the money?”
He looked as if he were enjoying himself and when he spoke there was suave brutality in his voice.
“No, I’m not,” he said.
For a moment her mind could not adjust itself to his words.
“I couldn’t give it to you, even if I wanted to. I haven’t a cent on me. Not a dollar in Atlanta. I have some money, yes, but not here. And I’m not saying where it is or how much. But if I tried to draw a draft on it, the Yankees would be on me like a duck on a June bug and then neither of us would get it. What do you think of that?”
Her face went an ugly green, freckles suddenly standing out across her nose and her contorted mouth was like Gerald’s in a killing rage. She sprang to her feet with an incoherent cry which made the hum of voices in the next room cease suddenly. Swift as a panther, Rhett was beside her, his heavy hand across her mouth, his arm tight about her waist. She struggled against him madly, trying to bite his hand, to kick his legs, to scream her rage, despair, hate, her agony of broken pride. She bent and twisted every way against the iron of his arm, her heart near bursting, her tight stays cutting off her breath. He held her so tightly, so roughly that it hurt and the hand over her mouth pinched into her jaws cruelly. His face was white under its tan, his eyes hard and anxious as he lifted her completely off her feet, swung her up against his chest and sat down in the chair, holding her writhing in his lap.
“Darling, for God’s sake! Stop! Hush! Don’t yell. They’ll be in here in a minute if you do. Do calm yourself. Do you want the Yankees to see you like this?”
She was beyond caring who saw her, beyond anything except a fiery desire to kill him, but dizziness was sweeping her. She could not breathe; he was choking her; her stays were like a swiftly compressing band of iron; his arms about her made her shake with helpless hate and fury. Then his voice became thin and dim and his face above her swirled in a sickening mist which became heavier and heavier until she no longer saw him-or anything else.
When she made feeble swimming motions to come back to consciousness, she was tired to her bones, weak, bewildered. She was lying back in the chair, her bonnet off, Rhett was slapping her wrist, his black eyes searching her face anxiously. The nice young captain was trying to pour a glass of brandy into her mouth and had spilled it down her neck. The other officers hovered helplessly about, whispering and waving their hands.
“I-guess I must have fainted,” she said, and her voice sounded so far away it frightened her.
“Drink this,” said Rhett, taking the glass and pushing it against her lips. Now she remembered and glared feebly at him but she was too tired for anger.
“Please, for my sake.”
She gulped and choked and began coughing but he pushed it to her mouth again. She swallowed deeply and the hot liquid burned suddenly in her throat.
“I think she’s better now, gentlemen,” said Rhett, “and I thank you very much. The realization that I’m to be executed was too much for her.”
The group in blue shuffled their feet and looked embarrassed and after several clearings of throats, they tramped out. The young captain paused in the doorway.
“If there’s anything more I can do-”
“No, thank you.”
He went out, closing the door behind him.
“Drink some more,” said Rhett.
“No.”
“Drink it.”
She swallowed another mouthful and the warmth began spreading through her body and strength flowed slowly back into her shaking legs. She pushed away the glass and tried to rise but he pressed her back.
“Take your hands off me. I’m going.”
“Not yet. Wait a minute. You might faint again.”
“I’d rather faint in the road than be here with you.”
“Just the same, I won’t have you fainting in the road.”
“Let me go. I hate you.”
A faint smile came back to his face at her words.
“That sounds more like you. You must be feeling better.”
She lay relaxed for a moment, trying to summon anger to her aid, trying to draw on her strength. But she was too tired. She was too tired to hate or to care very much about anything. Defeat lay on her spirit like lead. She had gambled everything and lost everything. Not even pride was left. This was the dead end of her last hope. This was the end of Tara, the end of them all. For a long time she lay back with her eyes closed, hearing his heavy breathing near her, and the glow of the brandy crept gradually over her, giving a false strength and warmth. When finally she opened her eyes and looked him in the face, anger had roused again. As her slanting eyebrows rushed down together in a frown Rhett’s old smile came back.
“Now you are better. I can tell it by your scowl.”
“Of course, I’m all right. Rhett Butler, you are hateful, a skunk, if ever I saw one! You knew very well what I was going to say as soon as I started talking and you knew you weren’t going to give me the money. And yet you let me go right on. You could have spared me-”
“Spared you and missed hearing all that? Not much. I have so few diversions here. I don’t know when I’ve ever heard anything so gratifying.” He laughed his sudden mocking laugh. At the sound she leaped to her feet, snatching up her bonnet.
He suddenly had her by the shoulders.
“Not quite yet. Do you feel well enough to talk sense?”
“Let me go!”
“You are well enough, I see. Then, tell me this. Was I the only iron you had in the fire?” His eyes were keen and alert, watching every change in her face.
“What do you mean?”
“Was I the only man you were going to try this on?”
“Is that any of your business?”
“More than you realize. Are there any other men on your string? Tell me!”
“No.”
“Incredible. I can’t imagine you without five or six in reserve. Surely someone will turn up to accept your interesting proposition. I feel so sure of it that I want to give you a little advice.”
“I don’t want your advice.”
“Nevertheless I will give it. Advice seems to be the only thing I can give you at present. Listen to it, for it’s good advice. When you are trying to get something out of a man, don’t blurt it out as you did to me. Do try to be more subtle, more seductive. It gets better results. You used to know how, to perfection. But just now when you offered me your-er-collateral for my money you looked as hard as nails. I’ve seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol twenty paces from me and they aren’t a pleasant sight. They evoke no ardor in the male breast. That’s no way to handle men, my dear. You are forgetting your early training.”
“I don’t need you to tell me how to behave,” she said and wearily put on her bonnet. She wondered how he could jest so blithely with a rope about his neck and her pitiful circumstances before him. She did not even notice that his hands were jammed in his pockets in hard fists as if he were straining at his own impotence.
“Cheer up,” he said, as she tied the bonnet strings. “You can come to my hanging and it will make you feel lots better. It’ll even up all your old scores with me-even this one. And I’ll mention you in my will.”
“Thank you, but they may not hang you till it’s too late to pay the taxes,” she said with a sudden malice that matched his own, and she meant it.
Chapter XXXV
It was raining when she came out of the building and the sky was a dull putty color. The soldiers on the square had taken shelter in their huts and the streets were deserted. There was no vehicle in sight and she knew she would have to walk the long way home.
The brandy glow faded as she trudged along. The cold wind made her shiver and the chilly needle-like drops drove hard into her face. The rain quickly penetrated Aunt Pitty’s thin cloak until it hung in clammy folds about her. She knew the velvet dress was being ruined and as for the tail feathers on the bonnet, they were as drooping and draggled as when their former owner had worn them about the wet barn yard of Tara. The bricks of the sidewalk were broken and, for long stretches, completely gone. In these spots the mud was ankle deep and her slippers stuck in it as if it were glue, even coming completely off her feet. Every time she bent over to retrieve them, the hem of the dress fell in the mud. She did not even try to avoid puddles but stepped dully into them, dragging her heavy skirts after her. She could feel her wet petticoat and pantalets cold about her ankles, but she was beyond caring about the wreck of the costume on which she had gambled so much. She was chilled and disheartened and desperate.
How could she ever go back to Tara and face them after her brave words? How could she tell them they must all go-somewhere? How could she leave it all, the red fields, the tall pines, the dark swampy bottom lands, the quiet burying ground where Ellen lay in the cedars’ deep shade?
Hatred of Rhett burned in her heart as she plodded along the slippery way. What a blackguard he was! She hoped they did hang him, so she would never have to face him again with his knowledge of her disgrace and her humiliation. Of course, he could have gotten the money for her if he’d wanted to get it. Oh, hanging was too good for him! Thank God, he couldn’t see her now, with her clothes soaking wet and her hair straggling and her teeth chattering. How hideous she must look and how he would laugh!
The negroes she passed turned insolent grins at her and laughed among themselves as she hurried by, slipping and sliding in the mud, stopping, panting to replace her slippers. How dared they laugh, the black apes! How dared they grin at her, Scarlett O’Hara of Tara! She’d like to have them all whipped until the blood ran down their backs. What devils the Yankees were to set them free, free to jeer at white people!
As she walked down Washington Street, the landscape was as dreary as her own heart. Here there was none of the bustle and cheerfulness which she had noted on Peachtree Street. Here many handsome homes had once stood, but few of them had been rebuilt. Smoked foundations and the lonesone blackened chimneys, now known as “Sherman’s Sentinels,” appeared with disheartening frequency. Overgrown paths led to what had been houses-old lawns thick with dead weeds, carriage blocks bearing names she knew so well, hitching posts which would never again know the knot of reins. Cold wind and rain, mud and bare trees, silence and desolation. How wet her feet were and how long the journey home!
She heard the splash of hooves behind her and moved farther over on the narrow sidewalk to avoid more mud splotches on Aunt Pittypat’s cloak. A horse and buggy came slowly up the road and she turned to watch it, determined to beg a ride if the driver was a white person. The rain obscured her vision as the buggy came abreast, but she saw the driver peer over the tarpaulin that stretched from the dashboard to his chin. There was something familiar about his face and as she stepped out into the road to get a closer view, there was an embarrassed little cough from the man and a well-known voice cried in accents of pleasure and astonishment: “Surely, it can’t be Miss Scarlett!”
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy!” she cried, splashing across the road and leaning on the muddy wheel, heedless of further damage to the cloak. “I was never so glad to see anybody in my life!”
He colored with pleasure at the obvious sincerity of her words, hastily squirted a stream of tobacco juice from the opposite side of the buggy and leaped spryly to the ground. He shook her hand enthusiastically and holding up the tarpaulin, assisted her into the buggy.
“Miss Scarlett, what are you doing over in this section by yourself? Don’t you know it’s dangerous these days? And you are soaking wet. Here, wrap the robe around your feet.”
As he fussed over her, clucking like a hen, she gave herself up to the luxury of being taken care of. It was nice to have a man fussing and clucking and scolding, even if it was only that old maid in pants, Frank Kennedy. It was especially soothing after Rhett’s brutal treatment. And oh, how good to see a County face when she was so far from home! He was well dressed, she noticed, and the buggy was new too. The horse looked young and well fed, but Frank looked far older than his years, older than on that Christmas eve when he had been at Tara with his men. He was thin and sallow faced and his yellow eyes were watery and sunken in creases of loose flesh. His ginger-colored beard was scantier than ever, streaked with tobacco juice and as ragged as if he clawed at it incessantly. But he looked bright and cheerful, in contrast with the lines of sorrow and worry and weariness which Scarlett saw in faces everywhere.
“It’s a pleasure to see you,” said Frank warmly. “I didn’t know you were in town. I saw Miss Pittypat only last week and she didn’t tell me you were coming. Did-er-ahem-did anyone else come up from Tara with you?”
He was thinking of Suellen, the silly old fool.
“No,” she said, wrapping the warm lap robe about her and trying to pull it up around her neck. “I came alone. I didn’t give Aunt Pitty any warning.”
He chirruped to the horse and it plodded off, picking its way carefully down the slick road.
“All the folks at Tara well?”
“Oh, yes, so-so.”
She must think of something to talk about, yet it was so hard to talk. Her mind was leaden with defeat and all she wanted was to lie back in this warm blanket and say to herself: “I won’t think of Tara now. I’ll think of it later, when it won’t hurt so much.” If she could just get him started talking on some subject which would hold him all the way home, so she would have nothing to do but murmur “How nice” and “You certainly are smart” at intervals.
“Mr. Kennedy, I’m so surprised to see you. I know I’ve been a bad girl, not keeping up with old friends, but I didn’t know you were here in Atlanta. I thought somebody told me you were in Marietta.”
“I do business in Marietta, a lot of business,” he said. “Didn’t Miss Suellen tell you I had settled in Atlanta? Didn’t she tell you about my store?”
Vaguely she had a memory of Suellen chattering about Frank and a store but she never paid much heed to anything Suellen said. It had been sufficient to know that Frank was alive and would some day take Suellen off her hands.
“No, not a word,” she lied. “Have you a store? How smart you must be!”
He looked a little hurt at hearing that Suellen had not published the news but brightened at the flattery.
“Yes, I’ve got a store, and a pretty good one I think. Folks tell me I’m a born merchant.”
He laughed pleasedly, the tittery cackling laugh which she always found so annoying.
Conceited old fool, she thought.
“Oh, you could be a success at anything you turned your hand to, Mr. Kennedy. But how on earth did you ever get started with the store? When I saw you Christmas before last you said you didn’t have a cent in the world.”
He cleared his throat raspingly, clawed at his whiskers and smiled his nervous timid smile.
“Well, it’s a long story, Miss Scarlett.”
Thank the Lord! she thought. Perhaps it will hold him till we get home. And aloud: “Do tell!”
“You recall when we came to Tara last, hunting for supplies? Well, not long after that I went into active service. I mean real fighting. No more commissary for me. There wasn’t much need for a commissary, Miss Scarlett, because we couldn’t hardly pick up a thing for the army, and I thought the place for an able-bodied man was in the fighting line. Well, I fought along with the cavalry for a spell till I got a minie ball through the shoulder.”
He looked very proud and Scarlett said: “How dreadful!”
“Oh, it wasn’t so bad, just a flesh wound,” he said deprecatingly. “I was sent down south to a hospital and when I was just about well, the Yankee raiders came through. My, my, but that was a hot time! We didn’t have much warning and all of us who could walk helped haul out the army stores and the hospital equipment to the train tracks to move it. We’d gotten one train about loaded when the Yankees rode in one end of town and out we went the other end as fast as we could go. My, my, that was a mighty sad sight, sitting on top of that train and seeing the Yankees burn those supplies we had to leave at the depot. Miss Scarlett, they burned about a half-mile of stuff we had piled up there along the tracks. We just did get away ourselves.”
“How dreadful!”
“Yes, that’s the word. Dreadful. Our men had come back into Atlanta then and so our train was sent here. Well, Miss Scarlett, it wasn’t long before the war was over and-well, there was a lot of china and cots and mattresses and blankets and nobody claiming them. I suppose rightfully they belonged to the Yankees. I think those were the terms of the surrender, weren’t they?”
“Um,” said Scarlett absently. She was getting warmer now and a little drowsy.
“I don’t know till now if I did right,” he said, a little querulously. “But the way I figured it, all that stuff wouldn’t do the Yankees a bit of good. They’d probably burn it. And our folks had paid good solid money for it, and I thought it still ought to belong to the Confederacy or to the Confederates. Do you see what I mean?”
“Um.”
“I’m glad you agree with me, Miss Scarlett. In a way, it’s been on my conscience. Lots of folks have told me: ‘Oh, forget about it, Frank,’ but I can’t. I couldn’t hold up my head if I thought I’d done what wasn’t right. Do you think I did right?”
“Of course,” she said, wondering what the old fool had been talking about. Some struggle with his conscience. When a man got as old as Frank Kennedy he ought to have learned not to bother about things that didn’t matter. But he always was so nervous and fussy and old maidish.
“I’m glad to hear you say it. After the surrender I had about ten dollars in silver and nothing else in the world. You know what they did to Jonesboro and my house and store there. I just didn’t know what to do. But I used the ten dollars to put a roof on an old store down by Five Points and I moved the hospital equipment in and started selling it. Everybody needed beds and china and mattresses and I sold them cheap, because I figured it was about as much other folks’ stuff as it was mine. But I cleared money on it and bought some more stuff and the store just went along fine. I think I’ll make a lot of money on it if things pick up.”
At the word “money,” her mind came back to him, crystal clear.
“You say you’ve made money?”
He visibly expanded under her interest. Few women except Suellen had ever given him more than perfunctory courtesy and it was very flattering to have a former belle like Scarlett hanging on his words. He slowed the horse so they would not reach home before he had finished his story.
“I’m not a millionaire, Miss Scarlett, and considering the money I used to have, what I’ve got now sounds small. But I made a thousand dollars this year. Of course, five hundred of it went to paying for new stock and repairing the store and paying the rent. But I’ve made five hundred clear and as things are certainly picking up, I ought to clear two thousand next year. I can sure use it, too, for you see, I’ve got another iron in the fire.”
Interest had sprung up sharply in her at the talk of money. She veiled her eyes with thick bristly lashes and moved a little closer to him.
“What does that mean, Mr. Kennedy?”
He laughed and slapped the reins against the horse’s back.
“I guess I’m boring you, talking about business, Miss Scarlett. A pretty little woman like you doesn’t need to know anything about business.”
The old fool.
“Oh, I know I’m a goose about business but I’m so interested! Please tell me all about it and you can explain what I don’t understand.”
“Well, my other iron is a sawmill.”
“A what?”
“A mill to cut up lumber and plane it. I haven’t bought it yet but I’m going to. There’s a man named Johnson who has one, way out Peachtree road, and he’s anxious to sell it. He needs some cash right away, so he wants to sell and stay and run it for me at a weekly wage. It’s one of the few mills in this section, Miss Scarlett. The Yankees destroyed most of them. And anyone who owns a sawmill owns a gold mine, for nowadays you can ask your own price for lumber. The Yankees burned so many houses here and there aren’t enough for people to live in and it looks like folks have gone crazy about rebuilding. They can t get enough lumber and they can’t get it fast enough. People are just pouring into Atlanta now, all the folks from the country districts who can’t make a go of farming without darkies and the Yankees and Carpetbaggers who are swarming in trying to pick our bones a little barer than they already are. I tell you Atlanta’s going to be a big town soon. They’ve got to have lumber for their houses, so I’m going to buy this mill just as soon as-well, as soon as some of the bills owing me are paid. By this time next year, I ought to be breathing easier about money. I-I guess you know why I’m so anxious to make money quickly, don’t you?”
He blushed and cackled again. He’s thinking of Suellen, Scarlett thought in disgust.
For a moment she considered asking him to lend her three hundred dollars, but wearily she rejected the idea. He would be embarrassed; he would stammer; he would offer excuses, but he wouldn’t lend it to her. He had worked hard for it, so he could marry Suellen in the spring and if he parted with it, his wedding would be postponed indefinitely. Even if she worked on his sympathies and his duty toward his future family and gained his promise of a loan, she knew Suellen would never permit it. Suellen was getting more and more worried over the fact that she was practically an old maid and she would move heaven and earth to prevent anything from delaying her marriage.
What was there in that whining complaining girl to make this old fool so anxious to give her a soft nest? Suellen didn’t deserve a loving husband and the profits of a store and a sawmill. The minute Sue got her hands on a little money she’d give herself unendurable airs and never contribute one cent toward the upkeep of Tara. Not Suellen! She’d think herself well out of it and not care if Tara went for taxes or burned to the ground, so long as she had pretty clothes and a “Mrs.” in front of her name.
As Scarlett thought of Suellen’s secure future and the precarious one of herself and Tara, anger flamed in her at the unfairness of life. Hastily she looked out of the buggy into the muddy street, lest Frank should see her expression. She was going to lose everything she had, while Sue-Suddenly a determination was born in her.
Suellen should not have Frank and his store and his mill!
Suellen didn’t deserve them. She was going to have them herself. She thought of Tara and remembered Jonas Wilkerson, venomous as a rattler, at the foot of the front steps, and she grasped at the last straw floating above the shipwreck of her life. Rhett had failed her but the Lord had provided Frank.
But can I get him? Her fingers clenched as she looked unseeingly into the rain. Can I make him forget Sue and propose to me real quick? If I could make Rhett almost propose, I know I could get Frank! Her eyes went over him, her lids flickering. Certainly, he’s no beauty, she thought coolly, and he’s got very bad teeth and his breath smells bad and he’s old enough to be my father. Moreover, he’s nervous and timid and well meaning, and I don’t know of any more damning qualities a man can have. But at least, he’s a gentleman and I believe I could stand living with him better than with Rhett. Certainly I could manage him easier. At any rate, beggars can’t be choosers.
That he was Suellen’s fiance caused her no qualm of conscience. After the complete moral collapse which had sent her to Atlanta and to Rhett, the appropriation of her sister’s betrothed seemed a minor affair and one not to be bothered with at this time.
With the rousing of fresh hope, her spine stiffened and she forgot that her feet were wet and cold. She looked at Frank so steadily, her eyes narrowing, that he became somewhat alarmed and she dropped her gaze swiftly, remembering Rhett’s words: “I’ve seen eyes like yours above a dueling pistol… They evoke no ardor in the male breast.”
“What’s the matter, Miss Scarlett? You got a chill?”
“Yes,” she answered helplessly. “Would you mind-” She hesitated timidly. “Would you mind if I put my hand in your coat pocket? It’s so cold and my muff is soaked through.”
“Why-why-of course not! And you haven’t any gloves! My, my, what a brute I’ve been idling along like this, talking my head off when you must be freezing and wanting to get to a fire. Giddap, Sally! By the way, Miss Scarlett, I’ve been so busy talking about myself I haven’t even asked you what you were doing in this section in this weather?”
“I was at the Yankee headquarters,” she answered before she thought. His sandy brows went up in astonishment.
“But Miss Scarlett! The soldiers-Why-”
“Mary, Mother of God, let me think of a real good lie,” she prayed hastily. It would never do for Frank to suspect she had seen Rhett. Frank thought Rhett the blackest of blackguards and unsafe for decent women to speak to.
“I went there-I went there to see if-if any of the officers would buy fancy work from me to send home to their wives. I embroider very nicely.”
He sank back against the seat aghast, indignation struggling with bewilderment.
“You went to the Yankees-But Miss Scarlett! You shouldn’t. Why-why… Surely your father doesn’t know! Surely, Miss Pittypat-”
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