"You've been poor! You just said that your father turned you out without a penny!" said Scarlett, furious. "I should think you'd understand and sympathize with Ashley!"
"I do understand;" said Rhett, "but I'm damned if I sympathize. After the surrender Ashley had much more than I had when I was thrown out. At least, he had friends who took him in, whereas I was Ishmael. But what has Ashley done with himself?"
"If you are comparing him with yourself, you conceited thing, why--He's not like you, thank God! He wouldn't soil his hands as you do, making money with Carpetbaggers and
Scalawags and Yankees. He's scrupulous and honorable!"
"But not too scrupulous and honorable to take aid and money from a woman."
"What else could he have done?"
"Who am I to say? I only know what I did, both when I was thrown out and nowadays. I only know what other men have done. We saw opportunity in the ruin of a civilization and we made the most of our opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are still making the most of it. But the Ashleys of this world have the same chances and don't take them. They just aren't smart, Scarlett, and only the smart deserve to survive."
She hardly heard what he was saying, for now there was coming back to her the exact
memory which had teased her a few minutes before when he first began speaking. She
remembered the cold wind that swept the orchard of Tara and Ashley standing by a pile of rails, his eyes looking beyond her. And he had said--what? Some funny foreign name that sounded like profanity and had talked of the end of the world. She had not known what he meant then but now bewildered comprehension was coming to her and with it a sick, weary feeling.
"Why, Ashley said--"
"Yes?"
"Once at Tara he said something about the--a--dusk of the gods and about the end of the world and some such foolishness."
"Ah, the G?tterd?mmerung!" Rhett's eyes were sharp with interest. "And what else?"
"Oh, I don't remember exactly. I wasn't paying much mind. But--yes--something about the strong coining through and the weak being winnowed out."
"Ah, so he knows. Then that makes it harder for him. Most of them don't know and will never know. They'll wonder all their lives where the lost enchantment has vanished. They'll simply suffer in proud and incompetent silence. But he understands. He knows he's winnowed out."
"Oh, he isn't! Not while I've got breath in my body."
He looked at her quietly and his brown face was smooth.
"Scarlett, how did you manage to get his consent to come to Atlanta and take over the mill? Did he struggle very hard against you?"
She had a quick memory of the scene with Ashley after Gerald's funeral and put it from
her.
"Why, of course not," she replied indignantly. "When I explained to him that I needed his help because I didn't trust that scamp who was running the mill and Frank was too busy to help me and I was going to--well, there was Ella Lorena, you see. He was very glad to help me out."
"Sweet are the uses of motherhood! So that's how you got around him. Well, you've got him where you want him now, poor devil, as shackled to you by obligations as any of your
convicts are by their chains. And I wish you both joy. But, as I said at the beginning of this discussion, you'll never get another cent out of me for any of your little unladylike schemes, my double-dealing lady."
She was smarting with anger and with disappointment as well. For some time she had
been planning to borrow more money from Rhett to buy a lot downtown and start a lumber yard there.
"I can do without your money," she cried. "I'm making money out of Johnnie Gallegher's mill, plenty of it, now that I don't use free darkies and I have some money out on mortgages and we are coining cash at the store from the darky trade."
"Yes, so I heard. How clever of you to rook the helpless and the widow and the orphan and the ignorant! But if you must steal, Scarlett, why not steal from the rich and strong instead of the poor and weak? From Robin Hood on down to now, that's been considered highly moral."
"Because," said Scarlett shortly, "it's a sight easier and safer to steal--as you call it--from the poor."
He laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.
"You're a fine honest rogue, Scarlett!"
A rogue! Queer that that term should hurt. She wasn't a rogue, she told herself
vehemently. At least, that wasn't what she wanted to be. She wanted to be a great lady. For a moment her mind went swiftly down the years and she saw her mother, moving with a sweet