She was not the only one who had seen the opportunities for making money out of lumber, but she did not fear her com
petitors. She knew with conscious pride in her own smartness that she was the equal of any of them. She was Gerald's own daughter and the shrewd trading instinct she had inherited was now sharpened by her needs.
At first the other dealers had laughed at her, laughed with good-natured contempt at the very idea of a woman in business. But now they did not laugh. They swore silently as they saw her ride by. The fact that she was a woman frequently worked in her favor, for she could upon occasion look so helpless and appealing that she melted hearts. With no difficulty whatever she could mutely convey the impression of a brave but timid lady, forced by brutal circumstance into a distasteful position, a helpless little lady who would probably starve if customers didn't buy her lumber. But when ladylike airs failed to get results she was coldly businesslike and willingly undersold her competitors at a loss to herself if it would bring her a new customer. She was not above selling a poor grade of lumber for the price of good lumber if she thought she would not be detected, and she had no scruples about blackguarding the other lumber dealers. With every appearance of reluctance at disclosing the unpleasant truth, she would sigh and tell prospective customers that her competitors' lumber was far too high in price, rotten, full of knot holes and in general of deplorably poor quality.
The first time Scarlett lied in this fashion she felt disconcerted and guilty -- disconcerted because the lie sprang so easily and naturally to her lips, guilty because the thought flashed into her mind: What would Mother say?
There was no doubt what Ellen would say to a daughter who told lies and engaged in sharp practices. She would be stunned and incredulous and would speak gentle words that stung despite their gentleness, would talk of honor and honesty and truth and duty to one's neighbor. Momentarily, Scarlett cringed as she pictured the look on her mother's face. And then the picture faded, blotted out by an impulse, hard, unscrupulous and greedy, which had been born in the lean days at Tara and was now strengthened by the present uncertainty of life. So she passed this milestone as she had passed others before it -- with a sigh that she was not as Ellen would like her to be, a shrug and the repetition of her unfailing charm: "I'll think of all this later."
But she never again thought of Ellen in connection with her business practices, never again regretted any means she used to take trade away from other lumber dealers. She knew she was perfectly safe in lying about them. Southern chivalry protected her. A Southern lady could lie about a gentleman but a Southern gentleman could not lie about a lady or, worse still, call the lady a liar. Other lumbermen could only fume inwardly and state heatedly, in the bosoms of their families, that they wished to God Mrs. Kennedy was a man for just about five minutes.
One poor white who operated a mill on the Decatur road did try to fight Scarlett with her own weapons, saying openly that she was a liar and a swindler. But it hurt him rather than helped, for everyone was appalled that even a poor white should say such shocking things about a lady of good family, even when the lady was conducting herself in such an unwomanly way. Scarlett bore his remarks with silent dignity and, as time went by, she turned all her attention to him and his customers. She undersold him so relentlessly and delivered, with secret groans, such an excellent quality of lumber to prove her probity that he was soon bankrupt. Then, to Frank's horror, she triumphantly bought his mill at her own price.
Once in her possession there arose the perplexing problem of finding a trustworthy man to put in charge of it. She did not want another man like Mr. Johnson. She knew that despite all her watchfulness he was still selling her lumber behind her back, but she thought it would be easy to find the right sort of man. Wasn't everybody as poor as Job's turkey, and weren't the streets full of men, some of them formerly rich, who were without work? The day never went by that Frank did not give money to some hungry ex-soldier or that Pitty and Cookie did not wrap up food for gaunt beggars.
But Scarlett, for some reason she could not understand, did not want any of these. "I don't want men who haven't found something to do after a year," she thought. "If they haven't adjusted to peace yet, they couldn't adjust to me. And they all look so hangdog and licked. I don't want a man who's licked. I want somebody who's smart and energetic like Renny or Tommy Wellburn or Kells Whiting or one of the Simmons boys or -- or any of that tribe. They haven't got that I-don't-care-about-anything look the soldiers had right after the surrender. They look like they cared a heap about a heap of things."
But to her surprise the Simmons boys, who had started a brick kiln, and Kells Whiting, who was selling a preparation made up in his mother's kitchen, that was guaranteed to straighten the lankiest negro hair in six applications, smiled politely, thanked her and refused. It was the same with the dozen others she approached. In desperation she raised the wage she was offering but she was still refused. One of Mrs. Merriwether's nephews observed impertinently that while he didn't especially enjoy driving a dray, it was his own dray and he would rather get somewhere under his own steam than Scarlett's.
One afternoon, Scarlett pulled up her buggy beside Rene Picard's pie wagon and hailed Ren e and the crippled Tommy Wellburn, who was catching a ride home with his friend.
"Look here, Renny, why don't you come and work for me? Managing a mill is a sight more respectable than driving a pie wagon. I'd think, you'd be ashamed."
"Me, I am dead to shame," grinned Rene. "Who would be respectable? All of my days I was respectable until ze war set me free lak ze darkies. Nevaire again must I be deegneefied and full of ennui. Free lak ze bird! I lak my pie wagon. I lak my mule. I lak ze dear Yankees who so kindly buy ze pie of Madame Belle M e re. No, my Scarlett, I must be ze King of ze Pies. Eet ees my destiny! Lak Napoleon, I follow my star." He flourished his whip dramatically.
"But you weren't raised to sell pies any more than Tommy was raised to wrastle with a bunch of wild Irish masons. My kind of work is more --"
"And I suppose you were raised to run a lumber mill," said Tommy, the corners of his mouth twitching. "Yes, I can just see little Scarlett at her mother's knee, lisping her lesson, 'Never sell good lumber if you can get a better price for bad.' "
Ren e roared at this, his small monkey eyes dancing with glee as he whacked Tommy on his twisted back.
"Don't be impudent," said Scarlett coldly, for she saw little humor in Tommy's remark. "Of course, I wasn't raised to run a sawmill."
"I didn't mean to be impudent. But you are running a sawmill, whether you were raised to it or not. And running it very well, too. Well, none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intended to do right now, but I think well make out just the same. It's a poor person and a poor nation that sits down and cries because life isn't precisely what they expected it to be. Why don't you pick up some enterprising Carpetbagger to work for you, Scarlett? The woods are full of them, God knows."
"I don't want a Carpetbagger. Carpetbaggers will steal anything that isn't red hot or nailed down. If they amounted to anything they'd have stayed where they were, instead of coming down here to pick our bones. I want a nice man, from nice folks, who is smart and honest and energetic and --"
"You don't want much. And you won't get it for the wage you're offering. All the men of that description, barring the badly maimed ones, have already got something to do. They may be round pegs in square holes but they've all got something to do. Something of their own that they'd rather do than work for a woman."
"Men haven't got much sense, have they, when you get down to rock bottom?"
"Maybe not but they've got a heap of pride," said Tommy soberly.
"Pride! Pride tastes awfully good, especially when the crust is flaky and you put meringue on it," said Scarlett tartly.
The two men laughed, a bit unwillingly, and it seemed to Scarlett that they drew together in united masculine disapproval of her. What Tommy said was true, she thought, running over in her mind the men she had approached and the ones she intended to approach. They were all busy, busy at something, working hard, working harder than they would have dreamed
possible in the days before the war. They weren't doing what they wanted to do perhaps, or what was easiest to do, or what they had been reared to do, but they were doing something. Times were too hard for men to be choosy. And if they were sorrowing for lost hopes, longing for lost ways of living, no one knew it but they. They were fighting a new war, a harder war than the one before. And they were caring about life again, caring with the same urgency and the same violence that animated them before the war had cut their lives in two.
"Scarlett," said Tommy awkwardly, "I do hate to ask a favor of you, after being impudent to you, but I'm going to ask it just the same. Maybe it would help you anyway. My brother-in-law, Hugh Elsing, isn't doing any too well peddling kindling wood. Everybody except the Yankees goes out and collects his own kindling wood. And I know things are mighty hard with the whole Elsing family. I -- I do what I can, but you see I've got Fanny to support, and then, too, I've got my mother and two widowed sisters down in Sparta to look after. Hugh is nice, and you wanted a nice man, and he's from nice folks, as you know, and he's honest."
"But -- well, Hugh hasn't got much gumption or else he'd make a success of his kindling."
Tommy shrugged.
"You've got a hard way of looking at things, Scarlett," he said. "But you think Hugh over. You could go far and do worse. I think his honesty and his willingness will outweigh his lack of gumption."
Scarlett did not answer, for she did not want to be too rude. But to her mind there were few, if any, qualities that outweighed gumption.