If he permitted her to do it.

From this conviction of wrongness, Frank gathered courage to forbid

Scarlett to do such a thing, and so strong were his remarks that

she, startled, relapsed into silence. Finally to quiet him, she

said meekly she hadn't really meant it. She was just so outdone

with Hugh and the free niggers she had lost her temper. Secretly,

she still thought about it and with some longing. Convict labor

would settle one of her hardest problems, but if Frank was going to

take on so about it--

She sighed. If even one of the mills were making money, she could

stand it. But Ashley was faring little better with his mill than

Hugh.

At first Scarlett was shocked and disappointed that Ashley did not

Immediately take hold and make the mill pay double what it had paid

under her management. He was so smart and he had read so many

books and there was no reason at all why he should not make a

brilliant success and lots of money. But he was no more successful

than Hugh. His inexperience, his errors, his utter lack of

business judgment and his scruples about close dealing were the

same as Hugh's.

Scarlett's love hastily found excuses for him and she did not

consider the two men in the same light. Hugh was just hopelessly

stupid, while Ashley was merely new at the business. Still,

unbidden, came the thought that Ashley could never make a quick

estimate in his head and give a price that was correct, as she

could. And she sometimes wondered if he'd ever learn to

distinguish between planking and sills. And because he was a

gentleman and himself trustworthy, he trusted every scoundrel who

came along and several times would have lost money for her if she

had not tactfully intervened. And if he liked a person--and he

seemed to like so many people!--he sold them lumber on credit

without ever thinking to find out if they had money in the bank or

property. He was as bad as Frank in that respect.

But surely he would learn! And while he was learning she had a

fond and maternal indulgence and patience for his errors. Every

evening when he called at her house, weary and discouraged, she was

tireless in her tactful, helpful suggestions. But for all her

encouragement and cheer, there was a queer dead look in his eyes.

She could not understand it and it frightened her. He was

different, so different from the man he used to be. If only she

could see him alone, perhaps she could discover the reason.

The situation gave her many sleepless nights. She worried about

Ashley, both because she knew he was unhappy and because she knew

his unhappiness wasn't helping him to become a good lumber dealer.

It was a torture to have her mills in the hands of two men with no

more business sense than Hugh and Ashley, heartbreaking to see her

competitors taking her best customers away when she had worked so

hard and planned so carefully for these helpless months. Oh, if

she could only get back to work again! She would take Ashley in

hand and then he would certainly learn. And Johnnie Gallegher

could run the other mill, and she could handle the selling, and

then everything would be fine. As for Hugh, he could drive a

delivery wagon if he still wanted to work for her. That was all he

was good for.

Of course, Gallegher looked like an unscrupulous man, for all of

his smartness, but--who else could she get? Why had the other men

who were both smart and honest been so perverse about working for

her? If she only had one of them working for her now in place of

Hugh, she wouldn't have to worry so much, but--

Tommy Wellburn, in spite of his crippled back, was the busiest

contractor in town and coining money, so people said. Mrs.

Merriwether and Rene were prospering and now had opened a bakery

downtown. Rene was managing it with true French thrift and Grandpa

Merriwether, glad to escape from his chimney corner, was driving

Rene's pie wagon. The Simmons boys were so busy they were

operating their brick kiln with three shifts of labor a day. And

Kells Whiting was cleaning up money with his hair straightener,

because he told the negroes they wouldn't ever be permitted to vote

the Republican ticket if they had kinky hair.

It was the same with all the smart young men she knew, the doctors,

the lawyers, the storekeepers. The apathy which had clutched them

immediately after the war had completely disappeared and they were

too busy building their own fortunes to help her build hers. The

ones who were not busy were the men of Hugh's type--or Ashley's.

What a mess it was to try to run a business and have a baby too!

"I'll never have another one," she decided firmly. "I'm not going

to be like other women and have a baby every year. Good Lord, that

would mean six months out of the year when I'd have to be away from

the mills! And I see now I can't afford to be away from them even

one day. I shall simply tell Frank that I won't have any more

children."

Frank wanted a big family, but she could manage Frank somehow. Her

mind was made up. This was her last child. The mills were far

more important.

CHAPTER XLII

Scarlett's child was a girl, a small bald-headed mite, ugly as a

hairless monkey and absurdly like Frank. No one except the doting

father could see anything beautiful about her, but the neighbors

were charitable enough to say that all ugly babies turned out

pretty, eventually. She was named Ella Lorena, Ella for her

grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the most fashionable

name of the day for girls, even as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall

Jackson were popular for boys and Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation

for negro children.

She was born in the middle of a week when frenzied excitement

gripped Atlanta and the air was tense with expectation of disaster.

A negro who had boasted of rape had actually been arrested, but

before he could be brought to trial the jail had been raided by the

Ku Klux Klan and he had been quietly hanged. The Klan had acted to

save the as yet unnamed victim from having to testify in open

court. Rather than have her appear and advertise her shame, her

father and brother would have shot her, so lynching the negro

seemed a sensible solution to the townspeople, in fact, the only

decent solution possible. But the military authorities were in a

fury. They saw no reason why the girl should mind testifying

publicly.

The soldiers made arrests right and left, swearing to wipe out the

Klan if they had to put every white man in Atlanta in jail. The

negroes, frightened and sullen, muttered of retaliatory house

burnings. The air was thick with rumors of wholesale hangings by

the Yankees should the guilty parties be found and of a concerted

uprising against the whites by the negroes. The people of the town

stayed at home behind locked doors and shuttered windows, the men

fearing to go to their businesses and leave their women and

children unprotected.

Scarlett, lying exhausted in bed, feebly and silently thanked God

that Ashley had too much sense to belong to the Klan and Frank was

too old and poor spirited. How dreadful it would be to know that

the Yankees might swoop down and arrest them at any minute! Why

didn't the crack-brained young fools in the Klan leave bad enough

alone and not stir up the Yankees like this? Probably the girl

hadn't been raped after all. Probably she'd just been frightened

silly and, because of her, a lot of men might lose their lives.