Gone with the Wind

Her black brows rushed together to meet in a sharp angle over her nose and Frank cowered, almost visibly. She had the temper of a Tartar and the rages of a wild cat and, at such times, she did not seem to care what she said or how much it hurt. Clouds of gloom hung over the house on such occasions. Frank went early to the store and stayed late. Pitty scrambled into her bedroom like a rabbit panting for its burrow. Wade and Uncle Peter retired to the carriage house and Cookie kept to her kitchen and forebore to raise her voice to praise the Lord in song. Only Mammy endured Scarlett’s temper with equanimity and Mammy had had many years of training with Gerald O’Hara and his explosions.

Scarlett did not mean to be short tempered and she really wanted to make Frank a good wife, for she was fond of him and grateful for his help in saving Tara. But he did try her patience to the breaking point so often and in so many different ways.

She could never respect a man who let her run over him and the timid, hesitant attitude he displayed in any unpleasant situation, with her or with others, irritated her unbearably. But she could have overlooked these things and even been happy, now that some of her money problems were being solved, except for her constantly renewed exasperation growing out of the many incidents which showed that Frank was neither a good business man nor did he want her to be a good business man.

As she expected, he had refused to collect the unpaid bills until she prodded him into it, and then he had done it apologetically and half heartedly. That experience was the final evidence she needed to show her that the Kennedy family would never have more than a bare living, unless she personally made the money she was determined to have. She knew now that Frank would be contented to dawdle along with his dirty little store for the rest of his life. He didn’t seem to realize what a slender fingerhold they had on security and how important it was to make more money in these troublous times when money was the only protection against fresh calamities.

Frank might have been a successful business man in the easy days before the war but he was so annoyingly old-fashioned, she thought, and so stubborn about wanting to do things in the old ways, when the old ways and the old days were gone. He was utterly lacking in the aggressiveness needed in these new bitter times. Well, she had the aggressiveness and she intended to use it, whether Frank liked it or not. They needed money and she was making money and it was hard work. The very least Frank could do, in her opinion, was not to interfere with her plans which were getting results.

With her inexperience, operating the new mill was no easy job and competition was keener now than it had been at first, so she was usually tired and worried and cross when she came home at nights. And when Frank would cough apologetically and say: “Sugar, I wouldn’t do this,” or “I wouldn’t do that, Sugar, if I were you,” it was all she could do to restrain herself from flying into a rage, and frequently she did not restrain herself. If he didn’t have the gumption to get out and make some money, why was he always finding fault with her? And the things he nagged her about were so silly! What difference did it make in times like these if she was being unwomanly? Especially when her unwomanly sawmill was bringing in money they needed so badly, she and the family and Tara, and Frank too.

Frank wanted rest and quiet. The war in which he had served so conscientiously had wrecked his health, cost him his fortune and made him an old man. He regretted none of these things and after four years of war, all he asked of life was peace and kindliness, loving faces about him and the approval of friends. He soon found that domestic peace had its price, and that price was letting Scarlett have her own way, no matter what she might wish to do. So, because he was tired, he bought peace at her own terms. Sometimes, he thought it was worth it to have her smiling when she opened the front door in the cold twilights, kissing him on the ear or the nose or some other inappropriate place, to feel her head snuggling drowsily on his shoulder at night under warm quilts. Home life could be so pleasant when Scarlett was having her own way. But the peace he gained was hollow, only an outward semblance, for he had purchased it at the cost of everything he held to be right in married life.

“A woman ought to pay more attention to her home and her family and not be gadding about like a man,” he thought. “Now, if she just had a baby-”