Gone with the Wind. Volume 2 / Унесенные ветром. Том 2

“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.