rhaps the truth dawned on him when Tony Fontaine, obviously fancy free, came to Atlanta on business. Perhaps it was told him more directly in letters from his sister in Jonesboro who was astounded at his marriage. Certainly he never learned from Suellen herself. She never wrote him and naturally he could not write her and explain. What good would explanations do anyway, now that he was married? He writhed inwardly at the thought that Suellen would never know the truth and would always think he had senselessly jilted her. Probably everyone else was thinking this too and criticizing him. It certainly put him in an awkward position. And he had no way of clearing himself, for a man couldn't go about saying he had lost his head about a woman-- and a gentleman couldn't advertise the fact that his wife had entrapped him with a lie.
Scarlett was his wife and a wife was entitled to the loyalty of her husband. Furthermore, he could not bring himself to believe she had married him coldly and with no affection for him at all. His masculine vanity would not permit such a thought to stay long in his mind. It was more pleasant to think she had fallen so suddenly in love with him she had been willing to lie to get him. But it was all very puzzling. He knew he was no great catch for a woman half his age and pretty and smart to boot, but Frank was a gentleman and he kept his bewilderment to himself. Scarlett was his wife and he could not insult her by asking awkward questions which, after all, would not remedy matters.
Not that Frank especially wanted to remedy matters, for it appeared that his marriage would be a happy one. Scarlett was the most charming and exciting of women and he thought her perfect in all things-- except that she was so headstrong. Frank learned early in his marriage that so long as she had her own way, life could be very pleasant, but when she was opposed -- Given her own way, she was as gay as a child, laughed a good deal, made foolish little jokes, sat on his knee and tweaked his beard until he vowed he felt twenty years younger. She could be unexpectedly sweet and thoughtful, having his slippers toasting at the fire when he came home at night, fussing affectionately about his wet feet and interminable head colds, remembering that he always liked the gizzard of the chicken and three spoonfuls of sugar in his coffee. Yes, life was very sweet and cozy with Scarlett -- as long as she had her own way.
When the marriage was two weeks old, Frank contracted the grippe and Dr. Meade put him to bed. In the first year of the war, Frank had spent two months in the hospital with pneumonia and he had lived in dread of another attack since that time, so he was only too glad to lie sweating under three blankets and drink the hot concoctions Mammy and Aunt Pitty brought him every hour.
The illness dragged on and Frank worried more and more about the store as each day passed. The place was in charge of the counter boy, who came to the house every night to report on the day's transactions, but Frank was not satisfied. He fretted until Scarlett who had only been waiting for such an opportunity laid a cool hand on his forehead and said: "Now, sweetheart, I shall be vexed if you take on so. I'll go to town and see how things are."
And she went, smiling as she smothered his feeble protests. During the three weeks of her new marriage, she had been in a fever to see his account books and find out just how money matters stood. What luck that he was bedridden!
The store stood near Five Points, its new roof glaring against the smoked bricks of the old walls. Wooden awnings covered the sidewalk to the edge of the street, and at the long iron bars connecting the uprights horses and mules were hitched, their heads bowed against the cold misty rain, their backs covered with torn blankets and quilts. The inside of the store was almost like Bullard's store in Jonesboro, except that there were no loungers about the roaring red-hot stove, whittling and spitting streams of tobacco juice at the sand boxes. It was bigger than Bullard's store and much darker. The wooden awnings cut off most of the winter daylight and the interior was dim and dingy, only a trickle of light coming in through the small fly-specked windows high up on the side walls. The floor was covered with muddy sawdust and everywhere was dust and dirt. There was a semblance of order in the front of the store, where tall shelves rose into the gloom stacked with bright bolts of cloth, china, cooking utensils and notions. But in the back, behind the partition, chaos reigned.
Here there was no flooring and the assorted jumble of stock was piled helter-skelter on the hard-packed earth. In the semidarkness she saw boxes and bales of goods, plows and harness and saddles and cheap pine coffins. Secondhand furniture, ranging from cheap gum to mahogany and rosewood, reared up in the gloom, and the rich but worn brocade and horsehair upholstery gleamed incongruously in the dingy surroundings. China chambers and bowl and pitcher sets littered the floor and all around the four walls were deep bins, so dark she had to hold the lamp directly over them to discover they contained seeds, nails, bolts and carpenters' tools.
"I'd think a man as fussy and old maidish as Frank would keep things tidier," she thought, scrubbing her grimy hands with her handkerchief. "This place is a pig pen. What a way to run a store! If he'd only dust up this stuff and put it out in front where folks could see it, he could sell things much quicker."
And if his stock was in such condition, what mustn't his accounts be!
I'll look at his account book now, she thought and, picking up the lamp, she went into the front of the store. Willie, the counter boy, was reluctant to give her the large dirty-backed ledger. It was obvious that, young as he was, he shared Frank's opinion that women had no place in business. But Scarlett silenced him with a sharp word and sent him out to get his dinner. She felt better when he was gone, for his disapproval annoyed her, and she settled herself in a split-bottomed chair by the roaring stove, tucked one foot under her and spread the book across her lap. It was dinner time and the streets were deserted. No customers called and she had the store to herself.
She turned the pages slowly, narrowly scanning the rows of names and figures written in Frank's cramped copperplate hand. It was just as she had expected, and she frowned as she saw this newest evidence of Frank's lack of business sense. At least five hundred dollars in debts, some of them months old, were set down against the names of people she knew well, the Merriwethers and the Elsings among other familiar names. From Frank's deprecatory remarks about the money "people" owed him, she had imagined the sums to be small. But this!
"If they can't pay, why do they keep on buying?" she thought irritably. "And if he knows they can't pay, why does he keep on selling them stuff? Lots of them could pay if he'd just make them do it. The Elsings certainly could if they could give Fanny a new satin dress and an expensive wedding. Frank's just too soft hearted, and people take advantage of him. Why, if he'd collected half this money, he could have bought the sawmill and easily spared me the tax money, too."
Then she thought: "Just imagine Frank trying to operate a sawmill! God's nightgown! If he runs this store like a charitable institution, how could he expect to make money on a mill? The sheriff would have it in a month. Why, I could run this store better than he does! And I could run a mill better than he could, even if I don't know anything about the lumber business!"
A startling thought this, that a woman could handle business matters as well as or better than a man, a revolutionary thought to Scarlett who had been reared in the tradition that men were omniscient and women none too bright. Of course, she had discovered that this was not altogether true but the pleasant fiction still stuck in her mind. Never before had she put this remarkable idea into words. She sat quite still, with the heavy book across her lap, her mouth a little open with surprise, thinking that during the lean months at Tara she had done a man's work and done it well. She had been brought up to believe that a woman alone could accomplish nothing, yet she had managed the plantation without men to help her until Will came. Why, why, her mind stuttered, I believe women could manage everything in the world without men's help -- except having babies, and God knows, no woman in her right mind would have babies if she could help it.
With the idea that she was as capable as a man came a sudden rush of pride and a violent longing to prove it, to make money for herself as men made money. Money which would be her own, which she would neither have to ask for nor account for to any man.
"I wish I had money enough to buy that mill myself," she said aloud and sighed. "I'd sure make it hum. And I wouldn't let even one splinter go out on credit."
She sighed again. There was nowhere she could get any money, so the idea was out of the question. Frank would simply have to collect this money owing him and buy the mill. It was a sure way to make money, and when he got the mill, she would certainly find some way to make him be more businesslike in its operation than he had been with the store.
She pulled a back page out of the ledger and began copying the list of debtors who had made no payments in several months. She'd take the matter up with Frank just as soon as she reached home. She'd make him realize that these people had to pay their bills even if they were old friends, even if it did embarrass him to press them for money. That would probably upset Frank, for he was timid and fond of the approbation of his friends. He was so thin skinned he'd rather lose the money than be businesslike about collecting it.
And he'd probably tell her that no one had any money with which to pay him. Well, perhaps that was true. Poverty was certainly no news to her. But nearly everybody had saved some silver or jewelry or was hanging on to a little real estate. Frank could take them in lieu of cash.
She could imagine how Frank would moan when she broached such an idea to him. Take the. jewelry and property of his friends! Well, she shrugged, he can moan all he likes. I'm going to tell him that he may be willing to stay poor for friendship's sake but I'm not. Frank will never get anywhere if he doesn't get up some gumption. And he's got to get somewhere! He's got to make money, even if I've got to wear the pants in the family to make him do it.
She was writing busily, her face screwed up with the effort, her tongue clamped between her teeth, when the front door opened and a great draft of cold wind swept the store. A tall man came into the dingy room walking with a light Indian-like tread, and looking up she saw Rhett Butler.
He was resplendent in new clothes and a greatcoat with a dashing cape thrown back from his heavy shoulders. His tall hat was off in a deep bow when her eyes met his and his hand went to the bosom of a spotless pleated shirt. His white teeth gleamed startlingly against his brown face and his bold eyes raked her.
"My dear Mrs. Kennedy," he said, walking toward her. "My very dear Mrs. Kennedy!" and he broke into a loud merry laugh.
At first she was as startled as if a ghost had invaded the store and then, hastily removing her foot from beneath her, she stiffened her spine and gave him a cold stare.
"What are you doing here?"
"I called on Miss Pittypat and learned of your marriage and so I hastened here to congratulate you."
The memory of her humiliation at his hands made her go crimson with shame.
"I don't see how you have the gall to face me!" she cried.
"On the contrary! How have you the gall to face me?"
"Oh, you are the most -- "
"Shall we let the bugles sing truce?" he smiled down at her, a wide flashing smile that had impudence in it but no shame for his own actions or condemnation for hers. In spite of herself, she had to smile too, but it was a wry, uncomfortable smile.
"What a pity they didn't hang you!"
"Others share your feeling, I fear. Come, Scarlett, relax. You look like you'd swallowed a ramrod and it isn't becoming. Surely, you've had time to recover from my -- er -- my little joke."
"Joke? Ha! I'll never get over it!"
"Oh, yes, you will. You are just putting on this indignant front because you think it's proper and respectable. May I sit down?"
"No."
He sank into a chair beside her and grinned.
"I hear you couldn't even wait two weeks for me," he said and gave a mock sigh. "How fickle is woman!"
When she did not reply he continued.
"Tell me, Scarlett, just between friends -- between very old and very intimate friends -- wouldn't it have been wiser to wait until I got out of jail? Or are the charms of wedlock with old Frank Kennedy more alluring than illicit relations with me?"
As always when his mockery aroused wrath within her, wrath fought with laughter at his impudence.
"Don't be absurd."
"And would you mind satisfying my curiosity on one point which has bothered me for some time? Did you have no womanly repugnance, no delicate shrinking from marrying not just one man but two for whom you had no love or even affection? Or have I been misinformed about the delicacy of our Southern womanhood?"
"Rhett!"
"I have my answer. I always felt that women had a hardness and endurance unknown to men, despite the pretty idea taught me in childhood that women are frail, tender, sensitive creatures. But after all, according to the Continental code of etiquette, it's very bad form for husband and wife to love each other. Very bad taste, indeed. I always felt that the Europeans had the right idea in that matter. Marry for convenience and love for pleasure. A sensible system, don't you think? You are closer to the old country than I thought."
How pleasant it would be to shout at him: "I did not marry for convenience!" But unfortunately, Rhett had her there and any protest of injured innocence would only bring more barbed remarks from him.
"How you do run on," she said coolly. Anxious to change the subject, she asked: "How did you ever get out of jail?"
"Oh, that!" he answered, making an airy gesture. "Not much trouble. They let me out this morning. I employed a delicate system of blackmail on a friend in Washington who is quite high in the councils of the Federal government. A splendid fellow -- one of the staunch Union patriots from whom I used to buy muskets and hoop skirts for the Confederacy. When my distressing predicament was brought to his attention in the right way, he hastened to use his influence, and so I was released. Influence is everything, and guilt or innocence merely an academic question."
"I'll take oath you weren't innocent."
"No, now that I am free of the toils, I'll frankly admit that I'm as guilty as Cain. I did kill the nigger. He was uppity to a lady, and what else could a Southern gentleman do? And while I'm confessing, I must admit that I shot a Yankee cavalryman after some words in a barroom. I was not charged with that peccadillo, so perhaps some other poor devil has been hanged for it, long since."
He was so blithe about his murders her blood chilled. Words of moral indignation rose to her lips but suddenly she remembered the Yankee who lay under the tangle of scuppernong vines at Tara. He had not been on her conscience any more than a roach upon which she might have stepped. She could not sit in judgment on Rhett when she was as guilty as he.
"And, as I seem to be making a clean breast of it, I must tell you, in strictest confidence (that means, don't tell Miss Pittypat!) that I did have the money, safe in a bank in Liverpool."
"The money?"
"Yes, the money the Yankees were so curious about. Scarlett, it wasn't altogether meanness that kept me from giving you the money you wanted. If I'd drawn a draft they could have traced it somehow and I doubt if you'd have gotten a cent. My only hope lay in doing nothing. I knew the money was pretty safe, for if worst came to worst, if they had located it and tried to take it away from me, I would have named every Yankee patriot who sold me bullets and machinery during the war. Then there would have been a stink, for some of them are high up in Washington now. In fact, it was my threat to unbosom my conscience about them that got me out of jail. I --"
"Do you mean you -- you actually have the Confederate gold?"
"Not all of it. Good Heavens, no! There must be fifty or more ex-blockaders who have plenty salted away in Nassau and England and Canada. We will be pretty unpopular with the Confederates who weren't as slick as we were. I have got close to half a million. Just think, Scarlett, a half-million dollars, if you'd only restrained your fiery nature and not rushed into wedlock again!"
A half-million dollars. She felt a pang of almost physical sickness at the thought of so much money. His jeering words passed over her head and she did not even hear them. It was hard to believe there was so much money in all this bitter and poverty-stricken world. So much money, so very much money, and someone else had it, someone who took it lightly and didn't need it. And she had only a sick elderly husband and this dirty, piddling, little store between her and a hostile world. It wasn't fair that a reprobate like Rhett Butler should have so much and she, who carried so heavy a load, should have so little. She hated him, sitting there in his dandified attire, taunting her. Well, she wouldn't swell his conceit by complimenting him on his cleverness. She longed viciously for sharp words with which to cut him.
"I suppose you think it's honest to keep the Confederate money. Well, it isn't. It's plain out and out stealing and you know it. I wouldn't have that on my conscience."
"My! How sour the grapes are today!" he exclaimed, screwing up his face. "And just whom am I stealing from?"
She was silent, trying to think just whom indeed. After all, he had only done what Frank had done on a small scale.
"Half the money is honestly mine," he continued, "honestly made with the aid of honest Union patriots who were willing to sell out the Union behind its back -- for one-hundred-percent profit on their goods. Part I made out of my little investment in cotton at the beginning of the war, the cotton I bought cheap and sold for a dollar a pound when the British mills were crying for it. Part I got from food speculation. Why should I let the Yankees have the fruits of my labor? But the rest did belong to the Confederacy. It came from Confederate cotton which I managed to run through the blockade and sell in Liverpool at sky-high prices. The cotton was given me in good faith to buy leather and rifles and machinery with. And it was taken by me in good, faith to buy the same. My orders were to leave the gold in English banks, under my own name, in order that my credit would be good. You remember when the blockade tightened, I couldn't get a boat out of any Confederate port or into one, so there the money stayed in England. What should I have done? Drawn out all that g