Gone with the Wind

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 halfinterest 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?”