Chapter - 42 | Gone with the Wind

-two
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 had 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.
In this atmosphere, as nerve straining as watching a slow fuse burn
toward a barrel of gunpowder, Scarlett came rapidly back to strength. The
healthy vigor which had carried her through the hard days at Tara stood
her in good stead now, and within two weeks of Ella Lorena’s birth she was
strong enough to sit up and chafe at her inactivity. In three weeks she was
up, declaring she had to see to the mills. They were standing idle because
both Hugh and Ashley feared to leave their families alone all day.
Then the blow fell.
Frank, full of the pride of new fatherhood, summoned up courage
enough to forbid Scarlett leaving the house while conditions were so
dangerous. His commands would not have worried her at all and she would
have gone about her business in spite of them, if he had not put her horse
and buggy in the livery stable and ordered that they should not be
surrendered to anyone except himself. To make matters worse, he and
Mammy had patiently searched the house while she was ill and unearthed
her hidden store of money. And Frank had deposited it in the bank in his
own name, so now she could not even hire a rig.
Scarlett raged at both Frank and Mammy, then was reduced to begging
and ﬁnally cried all one morning like a furious thwarted child. But for all
her pains she heard only: “There, Sugar! You’re just a sick little girl.” And:
“Miss Scarlett, ef you doan quit cahyin’ on so, you gwine sour yo’ milk an’
de baby have colic, sho as gun’s iron.”
In a furious temper, Scarlett charged through her back yard to Melanie’s
house and there unburdened herself at the top of her voice, declaring she
would walk to the mills, she would go about Atlanta telling everyone what
a varmint she had married, she would not be treated like a naughty
simpleminded child. She would carry a pistol and shoot anyone who
threatened her. She had shot one man and she would love, yes, love to
shoot another. She would—

Melanie who feared to venture onto her own front porch was appalled
by such threats.
“Oh, you must not risk yourself! I should die if anything happened to
you! Oh, please—”
“I will! I will! I will walk—”
Melanie looked at her and saw that this was not the hysteria of a woman
still weak from childbirth. There was the same breakneck, headlong
determination in Scarlett’s face that Melanie had often seen in Gerald
O’Hara’s face when his mind was made up. She put her arms around
Scarlett’s waist and held her tightly.
“It’s all my fault for not being brave like you and for keeping Ashley at
home with me all this time when he should have been at the mill. Oh,
dear! I’m such a ninny! Darling, I’ll tell Ashley I’m not a bit frightened and
I’ll come over and stay with you and Aunt Pitty and he can go back to
work and—”
Not even to herself would Scarlett admit that she did not think Ashley
could cope with the situation alone and she shouted: “You’ll do nothing of
the kind! What earthly good would Ashley do at work if he was worried
about you every minute? Everybody is just so hateful! Even Uncle Peter
refuses to go out with me! But I don’t care! I’ll go alone. I’ll walk every step
of the way and pick up a crew of darkies somewhere—”
“Oh, no! You mustn’t do that! Something dreadful might happen to you.
They say that Shantytown settlement on the Decatur road is just full of
mean darkies and you’d have to pass right by it. Let me think— Darling,
promise me you won’t do anything today and I’ll think of something.
Promise me you’ll go home and lie down. You look right peaked. Promise
me.”
Because she was too exhausted by her anger to do otherwise, Scarlett
sulkily promised and went home, haughtily refusing any overtures of peace
from her household.
That afternoon a strange ﬁgure stumped through Melanie’s hedge and
across Pitty’s back yard. Obviously, he was one of those men whom Mammy
and Dilcey referred to as “de riffraff whut Miss Melly pick up off de streets
an’ let sleep in her cellar.”
There were three rooms in the basement of Melanie’s house which
formerly had been servants’ quarters and a wine room. Now Dilcey

occupied one, and the other two were in constant use by a stream of
miserable and ragged transients. No one but Melanie knew whence they
came or where they were going and no one but she knew where she
collected them. Perhaps the negroes were right and she did pick them up
from the streets. But even as the great and the near great gravitated to her
small parlor, so unfortunates found their way to her cellar where they were
fed, bedded and sent on their way with packages of food. Usually the
occupants of the rooms were former Confederate soldiers of the rougher,
illiterate type, homeless men, men without families, beating their way
about the country in hope of ﬁnding work.
Frequently, brown and withered country women with broods of tow-
haired silent children spent the night there, women widowed by the war,
dispossessed of their farms, seeking relatives who were scattered and lost.
Sometimes the neighborhood was scandalized by the presence of foreigners,
speaking little or no English, who had been drawn South by glowing tales
of fortunes easily made. Once a Republican had slept there. At least,
Mammy insisted he was a Republican, saying she could smell a Republican,
same as a horse could smell a rattlesnake; but no one believed Mammy’s
story, for there must be some limit even to Melanie’s charity. At least
everyone hoped so.
Yes, thought Scarlett, sitting on the side porch in the pale November
sunshine with the baby on her lap, he is one of Melanie’s lame dogs. And
he’s really lame, at that!
The man who was making his way across the back yard stumped, like
Will Benteen, on a wooden leg. He was a tall, thin old man with a bald
head, which shone pinkishly dirty, and a grizzled beard so long he could
tuck it in his belt. He was over sixty, to judge by his hard, seamed face, but
there was no sag of age to his body. He was lank and ungainly but, even
with his wooden peg, he moved as swiftly as a snake.
He mounted the steps and came toward her and, even before he spoke,
revealing in his tones a twang and a burring of “r’s” unusual in the
lowlands, Scarlett knew that he was mountain born. For all his dirty, ragged
clothes there was about him, as about most mountaineers, an air of ﬁerce
silent pride that permitted no liberties and tolerated no foolishness. His
beard was stained with tobacco juice and a large wad in his jaw made his
face look deformed. His nose was thin and craggy, his eyebrows bushy and

twisted into witches’ locks and a lush growth of hair sprang from his ears,
giving the tufted look of a lynx’s ears. Beneath his brow was one hollow
socket from which a scar ran down his cheek, carving a diagonal line
through his beard. The other eye was small, pale and cold, an unwinking
and remorseless eye. There was a heavy pistol openly in his trouser band
and from the top of his tattered boot protruded the hilt of a bowie knife.
He returned Scarlett’s stare coldly and spat across the rail of the banister
before he spoke. There was contempt in his one eye, not a personal
contempt for her, but for her whole sex.
“Miz Wilkes sont me to work for you,” he said shortly. He spoke rustily,
as one unaccustomed to speaking, the words coming slowly and almost
with difﬁculty. “M’name’s Archie.”
“I’m sorry but I have no work for you, Mr. Archie.”
“Archie’s m’ fuss name.”
“I beg your pardon. What is your last name?”
He spat again. “I reckon that’s my bizness,” he said. “Archie’ll do.”
“I don’t care what your last name is! I have nothing for you to do.”
“I reckon you have. Miz Wilkes was upsot about yore wantin’ to run
aroun’ like a fool by yoreself and she sont me over here to drive aroun’ with
you.”
“Indeed?” cried Scarlett, indignant both at the man’s rudeness and
Melly’s meddling.
His one eye met hers with an impersonal animosity. “Yes. A woman’s got
no bizness botherin’ her men folks when they’re tryin’ to take keer of her. If
you’re bound to gad about, I’ll drive you. I hates niggers—Yankees too.”
He shifted his wad of tobacco to the other cheek and, without waiting
for an invitation, sat down on the top step. “I ain’t sayin’ I like drivin’
women aroun’, but Miz Wilkes been good to me, lettin’ me sleep in her
cellar, and she sont me to drive you.”
“But—” began Scarlett helplessly and then she stopped and looked at
him. After a moment she began to smile. She didn’t like the looks of this
elderly desperado but his presence would simplify matters. With him beside
her, she could go to town, drive to the mills, call on customers. No one
could doubt her safety with him and his very appearance was enough to
keep from giving rise to scandal.
“It’s a bargain,” she said. “That is, if my husband agrees.”

After a private conversation with Archie, Frank gave his reluctant
approval and sent word to the livery stable to release the horse and buggy.
He was hurt and disappointed that motherhood had not changed Scarlett
as he had hoped it would but, if she was determined to go back to her
damnable mills, then Archie was a godsend.
So began the relationship that at ﬁrst startled Atlanta. Archie and
Scarlett were a queerly assorted pair, the truculent dirty old man with his
wooden peg sticking stifﬂy out over the dashboard and the pretty, neatly
dressed young woman with forehead puckered in an abstracted frown. They
could be seen at all hours and at all places in and near Atlanta, seldom
speaking to each other, obviously disliking each other, but bound together
by mutual need, he of money, she of protection. At least, said the ladies of
the town, it’s better than riding around so brazenly with that Butler man.
They wondered curiously where Rhett was these days, for he had abruptly
left town three months before and no one, not even Scarlett, knew where
he was.
Archie was a silent man, never speaking unless spoken to and usually
answering with grunts. Every morning he came from Melanie’s cellar and
sat on the front steps of Pitty’s house, chewing and spitting until Scarlett
came out and Peter brought the buggy from the stable. Uncle Peter feared
him only a little less than the devil or the Ku Klux and even Mammy
walked silently and timorously around him. He hated negroes and they
knew it and feared him. He reinforced his pistol and knife with another
pistol, and his fame spread far among the black population. He never once
had to draw a pistol or even lay his hand on his belt. The moral effect was
sufﬁcient. No negro dared even laugh while Archie was in hearing.
Once Scarlett asked him curiously why he hated negroes and was
surprised when he answered, for generally all questions were answered by “I
reckon that’s my bizness.”
“I hates them, like all mountain folks hates them. We never liked them
and we never owned none. It was them niggers that started the war. I hates
them for that, too.”
“But you fought in the war.”
“I reckon that’s a man’s privilege. I hates Yankees too, more’n I hates
niggers. Most as much as I hates talkative women.”

It was such outspoken rudeness as this that threw Scarlett into silent
furies and made her long to be rid of him. But how could she do without
him? In what other way could she obtain such freedom? He was rude and
dirty and, occasionally, very odorous but he served his purpose. He drove
her to and from the mills and on her round of customers, spitting and
staring off into space while she talked and gave orders. If she climbed down
from the buggy, he climbed after her and dogged her footsteps. When she
was among rough laborers, negroes or Yankee soldiers, he was seldom more
than a pace from her elbow.
Soon Atlanta became accustomed to seeing Scarlett and her bodyguard
and, from being accustomed, the ladies grew to envy her her freedom of
movement. Since the Ku Klux lynching, the ladies had been practically
immured, not even going to town to shop unless there were half a dozen in
their group. Naturally social minded, they became restless and, putting
their pride in their pockets, they began to beg the loan of Archie from
Scarlett. And whenever she did not need him, she was gracious enough to
spare him for the use of other ladies.
Soon Archie became an Atlanta institution and the ladies competed for
his free time. There was seldom a morning when a child or a negro servant
did not arrive at breakfast time with a note saying: “If you aren’t using
Archie this afternoon, do let me have him. I want to drive to the cemetery
with ﬂowers.” “I must go to the milliners.” “I should like Archie to drive
Aunt Nelly for an airing.” “I must go calling on Peters Street and Grandpa
is not feeling well enough to take me. Could Archie—”
He drove them all, maids, matrons and widows, and toward all he
evidenced the same uncompromising contempt. It was obvious that he did
not like women, Melanie excepted, any better than he liked negroes and
Yankees. Shocked at ﬁrst by his rudeness, the ladies ﬁnally became
accustomed to him and, as he was so silent, except for intermittent
explosions of tobacco juice, they took him as much for granted as the
horses he drove and forgot his very existence. In fact, Mrs. Merriwether
related to Mrs. Meade the complete details of her niece’s conﬁnement
before she even remembered Archie’s presence on the front seat of the
carriage.
At no other time than this could such a situation have been possible.
Before the war, he would not have been permitted even in the ladies’

kitchens. They would have handed him food through the back door and
sent him about his business. But now they welcomed his reassuring
presence. Rude, illiterate, dirty, he was a bulwark between the ladies and
the terrors of Reconstruction. He was neither friend nor servant. He was a
hired bodyguard, protecting the women while their men worked by day or
were absent from home at night.
It seemed to Scarlett that after Archie came to work for her Frank was
away at night very frequently. He said the books at the store had to be
balanced and business was brisk enough now to give him little time to
attend to this in working hours. And there were sick friends with whom he
had to sit. Then there was the organization of Democrats who foregathered
every Wednesday night to devise ways of regaining the ballot and Frank
never missed a meeting. Scarlett thought this organization did little else
except argue the merits of General John B. Gordon over every other
general, except General Lee, and reﬁght the war. Certainly she could
observe no progress in the direction of the recovery of the ballot. But Frank
evidently enjoyed the meetings for he stayed out until all hours on those
nights.
Ashley also sat up with the sick and he, too, attended the Democratic
meetings and he was usually away on the same nights as Frank. On these
nights, Archie escorted Pitty, Scarlett, Wade and little Ella through the
back yard to Melanie’s house and the two families spent the evenings
together. The ladies sewed while Archie lay full length on the parlor sofa
snoring, his gray whiskers ﬂuttering at each rumble. No one had invited
him to dispose himself on the sofa and as it was the ﬁnest piece of furniture
in the house, the ladies secretly moaned every time he lay down on it,
planting his boot on the pretty upholstery. But none of them had the
courage to remonstrate with him. Especially after he remarked that it was
lucky he went to sleep easy, for otherwise the sound of women clattering
like a ﬂock of guinea hens would certainly drive him crazy.
Scarlett sometimes wondered where Archie had come from and what his
life had been before he came to live in Melly’s cellar but she asked no
questions. There was that about his grim one-eyed face which discouraged
curiosity. All she knew was that his voice bespoke the mountains to the
north and that he had been in the army and had lost both leg and eye

shortly before the surrender. It was words spoken in a ﬁt of anger against
Hugh Elsing which brought out the truth of Archie’s past.
One morning, the old man had driven her to Hugh’s mill and she had
found it idle, the negroes gone and Hugh sitting despondently under a tree.
His crew had not made their appearance that morning and he was at a loss
as to what to do. Scarlett was in a furious temper and did not scruple to
expend it on Hugh, for she had just received an order for a large amount of
lumber—a rush order at that. She had used energy and charm and
bargaining to get that order and now the mill was quiet.
“Drive me out to the other mill,” she directed Archie. “Yes, I know it’ll
take a long time and we won’t get any dinner but what am I paying you for?
I’ll have to make Mr. Wilkes stop what he’s doing and run me off this
lumber. Like as not, his crew won’t be working either. Great balls of ﬁre! I
never saw such a nincompoop as Hugh Elsing! I’m going to get rid of him
just as soon as that Johnnie Gallegher ﬁnishes the stores he’s building.
What do I care if Gallegher was in the Yankee Army? He’ll work. I never
saw a lazy Irishman yet. And I’m through with free issue darkies. You just
can’t depend on them. I’m going to get Johnnie Gallegher and lease me
some convicts. He’ll get work out of them. He’ll—”
Archie turned to her, his eye malevolent, and when he spoke there was
cold anger in his rusty voice.
“The day you gits convicts is the day I quits you,” he said.
Scarlett was startled. “Good heavens! Why?”
“I knows about convict leasin’. I calls it convict murderin’. Buyin’ men
like they was mules. Treatin’ them worse than mules ever was treated.
Beatin’ them, starvin’ them, killin’ them. And who cares? The State don’t
care. It’s got the lease money. The folks that gits the convicts, they don’t
care. All they want is to feed them cheap and git all the work they can out
of them. Hell, Ma’m. I never thought much of women and I think less of
them now.”
“Is it any of your business?”
“I reckon,” said Archie laconically and, after a pause, “I was a convict
for nigh on to forty years.”
Scarlett gasped, and, for a moment, shrank back against the cushions.
This then was the answer to the riddle of Archie, his unwillingness to tell
his last name or the place of his birth or any scrap of his past life, the

answer to the difﬁculty with which he spoke and his cold hatred of the
world. Forty years! He must have gone into prison a young man. Forty
years! Why—he must have been a life prisoner and lifers were—
“Was it—murder?”
“Yes,” answered Archie brieﬂy, as he ﬂapped the reins. “M’ wife.”
Scarlett’s eyelids batted rapidly with fright.
The mouth beneath the beard seemed to move, as if he were smiling
grimly at her fear. “I ain’t goin’ to kill you, Ma’m, if that’s what’s frettin’
you. Thar ain’t but one reason for killin’ a woman.”
“You killed your wife.”
“She was layin’ with my brother. He got away. I ain’t sorry none that I
kilt her. Loose women ought to be kilt. The law ain’t got no right to put a
man in jail for that but I was sont.”
“But—how did you get out? Did you escape? Were you pardoned?”
“You might call it a pardon.” His thick gray brows writhed together as
though the effort of stringing words together was difﬁcult.
“’Long in ’sixty-four when Sherman come through, I was at
Milledgeville jail, like I been for forty years. And the warden he called all
us prisoners together and he says the Yankees are a-comin’, a-burnin’ and a-
killin’. Now if thar’s one thing I hates worse than a nigger or a woman, it’s
a Yankee.”
“Why? Had you— Did you ever know any Yankees?”
“No’m. But I’d hearn tell of them. I’d hearn tell they couldn’t never
mind their own bizness. I hates folks who can’t mind their own bizness.
What was they doin’ in Georgia, freein’ our niggers and burnin’ our houses
and killin’ our stock? Well, the warden he said the army needed more
soldiers bad, and any of us who’d jine up would be free at the end of the
war—if we come out alive. But us lifers—us murderers, the warden he said
the army didn’t want us. We was to be sont somewheres else to another jail.
But I said to the warden I ain’t like most lifers. I’m just in for killin’ my wife
and she needed killin’. And I wants to ﬁght the Yankees. And the warden
he saw my side of it and he slipped me out with the other prisoners.”
He paused and grunted.
“Huh. That was right funny. They put me in jail for killin’ and they let
me out with a gun in my hand and a free pardon to do more killin’. It shore
was good to be a free man with a riﬂe in my hand again. Us men from

Milledgeville did good ﬁghtin’ and killin’—and a lot of us was kilt. I never
knowed one who deserted. And when the surrender come, we was free. I
lost this here leg and this here eye. But I ain’t sorry.”
“Oh,” said Scarlett, weakly.
She tried to remember what she had heard about the releasing of the
Milledgeville convicts in that last desperate effort to stem the tide of
Sherman’s army. Frank had mentioned it that Christmas of 1864. What
had he said? But her memories of that time were too chaotic. Again she felt
the wild terror of those days, heard the siege guns, saw the line of wagons
dripping blood into the red roads, saw the Home Guard marching off, the
little cadets and the children like Phil Meade and the old men like Uncle
Henry and Grandpa Merriwether. And the convicts had marched out too,
to die in the twilight of the Confederacy, to freeze in the snow and sleet of
that last campaign in Tennessee.
For a brief moment she thought what a fool this old man was, to ﬁght for
a state which had taken forty years from his life. Georgia had taken his
youth and his middle years for a crime that was no crime to him, yet he had
freely given a leg and an eye to Georgia. The bitter words Rhett had
spoken in the early days of the war came back to her, and she remembered
him saying he would never ﬁght for a society that had made him an
outcast. But when the emergency had arisen, he had gone off to ﬁght for
that same society, even as Archie had done. It seemed to her that all
Southern men, high or low, were sentimental fools and cared less for their
hides than for words which had no meaning.
She looked at Archie’s gnarled old hands, his two pistols and his knife,
and fear pricked her again. Were there other ex-convicts at large, like
Archie, murderers, desperadoes, thieves, pardoned for their crimes in the
name of the Confederacy? Why, any stranger on the street might be a
murderer! If Frank ever learned the truth about Archie, there would be the
devil to pay. Or if Aunt Pitty—but the shock would kill Pitty. And as for
Melanie— Scarlett almost wished she could tell Melanie the truth about
Archie. It would serve her right for picking up trash and foisting it off on
her friends and relatives.
“I’m—I’m glad you told me, Archie. I—I won’t tell anyone. It would be
a great shock to Mrs. Wilkes and the other ladies if they knew.”

“Huh. Miz Wilkes knows. I told her the night she fuss let me sleep in her
cellar. You don’t think I’d let a nice lady like her take me into her house
not knowin’?”
“Saints preserve us!” cried Scarlett, aghast.
Melanie knew this man was a murderer and a woman murderer at that
and she hadn’t ejected him from her house. She had trusted her son with
him and her aunt and sister-in-law and all her friends. And she, the most
timid of females, had not been frightened to be alone with him in her
house.
“Miz Wilkes is right sensible, for a woman. She ’lowed that I was all
right. She ’lowed that a liar allus kept on lyin’ and a thief kept on stealin’
but folks don’t do more’n one murder in a lifetime. And she reckoned as
how anybody who’d fought for the Confederacy had wiped out anything
bad they’d done. Though I don’t hold that I done nothin’ bad, killin’ my
wife…. Yes, Miz Wilkes is right sensible, for a woman…. And I’m tellin’
you, the day you leases convicts is the day I quits you.”
Scarlett made no reply but she thought, “The sooner you quit me the
better it will suit me. A murderer!”
How could Melly have been so—so— Well, there was no word for
Melanie’s action in taking in this old rufﬁan and not telling her friends he
was a jailbird. So service in the army wiped out past sins! Melanie had that
mixed up with baptism! But then Melly was utterly silly about the
Confederacy, its veterans, and anything pertaining to them. Scarlett
silently damned the Yankees and added another mark on her score against
them. They were responsible for a situation that forced a woman to keep a
murderer at her side to protect her.
* * *
Driving home with Archie in the chill twilight, Scarlett saw a clutter of
saddle horses, buggies and wagons outside the Girl of the Period Saloon.
Ashley was sitting on his horse, a strained alert look on his face; the
Simmons boys were leaning from their buggy, making emphatic gestures;
Hugh Elsing, his lock of brown hair falling in his eyes, was waving his
hands. Grandpa Merriwether’s pie wagon was in the center of the tangle

and, as she came closer, Scarlett saw that Tommy Wellburn and Uncle
Henry Hamilton were crowded on the seat with him.
“I wish,” thought Scarlett irritably, “that Uncle Henry wouldn’t ride
home in that contraption. He ought to be ashamed to be seen in it. It isn’t
as though he didn’t have a horse of his own. He just does it so he and
Grandpa can go to the saloon together every night.”
As she came abreast the crowd something of their tenseness reached her,
insensitive though she was, and made fear clutch at her heart.
“Oh!” she thought. “I hope no one else has been raped! If the Ku Klux
lynch just one more darky the Yankees will wipe us out!” And she spoke to
Archie. “Pull up. Something’s wrong.”
“You ain’t goin’ to stop outside a saloon,” said Archie.
“You heard me. Pull up. Good evening, everybody. Ashley—Uncle
Henry—is something wrong? You all look so—”
The crowd turned to her, tipping their hats and smiling, but there was a
driving excitement in their eyes.
“Something’s right and something’s wrong,” barked Uncle Henry.
“Depends on how you look at it. The way I ﬁgure is the legislature couldn’t
have done different.”
The legislature? thought Scarlett in relief. She had little interest in the
legislature, feeling that its doings could hardly affect her. It was the
prospect of the Yankee soldiers on a rampage again that frightened her.
“What’s the legislature been up to now?”
“They’ve ﬂatly refused to ratify the amendment,” said Grandpa
Merriwether and there was pride in his voice. “That’ll show the Yankees.”
“And there’ll be hell to pay for it—I beg your pardon, Scarlett,” said
Ashley.
“Oh, the amendment?” questioned Scarlett, trying to look intelligent.
Politics were beyond her and she seldom wasted time thinking about
them. There had been a Thirteenth Amendment ratiﬁed sometime before
or maybe it had been the Sixteenth Amendment but what ratiﬁcation
meant she had no idea. Men were always getting excited about such things.
Something of her lack of comprehension showed in her face and Ashley
smiled.
“It’s the amendment letting the darkies vote, you know,” he explained.
“It was submitted to the legislature and they refused to ratify it.”

“How silly of them! You know the Yankees are going to force it down
our throats!”
“That’s what I meant by saying there’d be hell to pay,” said Ashley.
“I’m proud of the legislature, proud of their gumption!” shouted Uncle
Henry. “The Yankees can’t force it down our throats if we won’t have it.”
“They can and they will.” Ashley’s voice was calm but there was worry
in his eyes. “And it’ll make things just that much harder for us.”
“Oh, Ashley, surely not! Things couldn’t be any harder than they are
now!”
“Yes, things can get worse, even worse than they are now. Suppose we
have a dark legislature? A darky governor? Suppose we have a worse
military rule than we now have?”
Scarlett’s eyes grew large with fear as some understanding entered her
mind.
“I’ve been trying to think what would be best for Georgia, best for all of
us.” Ashley’s face was drawn. “Whether it’s wisest to ﬁght this thing like
the legislature has done, rouse the North against us and bring the whole
Yankee Army on us to cram the darky vote down us, whether we want it or
not. Or—swallow our pride as best we can, submit gracefully and get the
whole matter over with as easily as possible. It will amount to the same
thing in the end. We’re helpless. We’ve got to take the dose they’re
determined to give us. Maybe it would be better for us to take it without
kicking.”
Scarlett hardly heard his words, certainly their full import went over her
head. She knew that Ashley, as usual, was seeing both sides of a question.
She was seeing only one side—how this slap in the Yankees’ faces might
affect her.
“Going to turn Radical and vote the Republican ticket, Ashley?” jeered
Grandpa Merriwether harshly.
There was a tense silence. Scarlett saw Archie’s hand make a swift move
toward his pistol and then stop. Archie thought, and frequently said, that
Grandpa was an old bag of wind and Archie had no intention of letting
him insult Miss Melanie’s husband, even if Miss Melanie’s husband was
talking like a fool.
The perplexity vanished suddenly from Ashley’s eyes and hot anger
ﬂared. But before he could speak, Uncle Henry charged Grandpa.

“You God—you blast— I beg your pardon, Scarlett— Grandpa, you
jackass, don’t you say that to Ashley!”
“Ashley can take care of himself without you defending him,” said
Grandpa coldly. “And he is talking like a Scallawag. Submit, hell! I beg
your pardon, Scarlett.”
“I didn’t believe in secession,” said Ashley and his voice shook with
anger. “But when Georgia seceded, I went with her. And I didn’t believe in
war but I fought in the war. And I don’t believe in making the Yankees
madder than they already are. But if the legislature has decided to do it, I’ll
stand by the legislature. I—”
“Archie,” said Uncle Henry abruptly, “drive Miss Scarlett on home.
This isn’t any place for her. Politics aren’t for women folks anyway, and
there’s going to be cussing in a minute. Go on, Archie. Good night,
Scarlett.”
As they drove off down Peachtree Street, Scarlett’s heart was beating
fast with fear. Would this foolish action of the legislature have any effect
on her safety? Would it so enrage the Yankees that she might lose her mills?
“Well, sir,” rumbled Archie, “I’ve hearn tell of rabbits spittin’ in
bulldogs’ faces but I ain’t never seen it till now. Them legislatures might
just as well have hollered ‘Hurray for Jeff Davis and the Southern
Confederacy’ for all the good it’ll do them—and us. Them nigger-lovin’
Yankees have made up their mind to make the niggers our bosses. But you
got to admire them legislatures’ sperrit!”
“Admire them? Great balls of ﬁre! Admire them? They ought to be shot!
It’ll bring the Yankees down on us like a duck on a June bug. Why couldn’t
they have rati—radi—whatever they were supposed to do to it and
smoothed the Yankees down instead of stirring them up again? They’re
going to make us knuckle under and we may as well knuckle now as later.”
Archie ﬁxed her with a cold eye.
“Knuckle under without a ﬁght? Women ain’t got no more pride than
goats.”
* * *

When Scarlett leased ten convicts, ﬁve for each of her mills, Archie made
good his threat and refused to have anything further to do with her. Not all
Melanie’s pleading or Frank’s promises of higher pay would induce him to
take up the reins again. He willingly escorted Melanie and Pitty and India
and their friends about the town but not Scarlett. He would not even drive
for the other ladies if Scarlett was in the carriage. It was an embarrassing
situation, having the old desperado sitting in judgment upon her, and it
was still more embarrassing to know that her family and friends agreed with
the old man.
Frank pleaded with her against taking the step. Ashley at ﬁrst refused to
work convicts and was persuaded, against his will, only after tears and
supplications and promises that when times were better she would hire free
darkies. Neighbors were so outspoken in their disapproval that Frank, Pitty
and Melanie found it hard to hold up their heads. Even Peter and Mammy
declared that it was bad luck to work convicts and no good would come of
it. Everyone said it was wrong to take advantage of the miseries and
misfortunes of others.
“You didn’t have any objections to working slaves!” Scarlett cried
indignantly.
Ah, but that was different. Slaves were neither miserable nor
unfortunate. The negroes were far better off under slavery than they were
now under freedom, and if she didn’t believe it, just look about her! But, as
usual, opposition had the effect of making Scarlett more determined on her
course. She removed Hugh from the management of the mill, put him to
driving a lumber wagon and closed the ﬁnal details of hiring Johnnie
Gallegher.
He seemed to be the only person she knew who approved of the
convicts. He nodded his bullet head brieﬂy and said it was a smart move.
Scarlett, looking at the little ex-jockey, planted ﬁrmly on his short bowed
legs, his gnomish face hard and businesslike, thought: “Whoever let him
ride their horses didn’t care much for horse ﬂesh. I wouldn’t let him get
within ten feet of any horse of mine.”
But she had no qualms in trusting him with a convict gang.
“And I’m to have a free hand with the gang?” he questioned, his eyes as
cold as gray agates.

“A free hand. All I ask is that you keep that mill running and deliver my
lumber when I want it and as much as I want.”
“I’m your man,” said Johnnie shortly. “I’ll tell Mr. Wellburn I’m leaving
him.”
As he rolled off through the crowd of masons and carpenters and hod
carriers Scarlett felt relieved and her spirits rose. Johnnie was indeed her
man. He was tough and hard and there was no nonsense about him.
“Shanty Irish on the make,” Frank had contemptuously called him, but for
that very reason Scarlett valued him. She knew that an Irishman with a
determination to get somewhere was a valuable man to have, regardless of
what his personal characteristics might be. And she felt a closer kinship
with him than with many men of her own class, for Johnnie knew the
value of money.
The ﬁrst week he took over the mill he justiﬁed all her hopes, for he
accomplished more with ﬁve convicts than Hugh had ever done with his
crew of ten free negroes. More than that, he gave Scarlett greater leisure
than she had had since she came to Atlanta the year before, because he
had no liking for her presence at the mill and said so frankly.
“You tend to your end of selling and let me tend to my end of
lumbering,” he said shortly. “A convict camp ain’t any place for a lady and
if nobody else’ll tell you so, Johnnie Gallegher’s telling you now. I’m
delivering your lumber, ain’t I? Well, I’ve got no notion to be pestered
every day like Mr. Wilkes. He needs pestering. I don’t.”
So Scarlett reluctantly stayed away from Johnnie’s mill, fearing that if
she came too often he might quit and that would be ruinous. His remark
that Ashley needed pestering stung her, for there was more truth in it than
she liked to admit. Ashley was doing little better with convicts than he had
done with free labor, although why, he was unable to tell. Moreover, he
looked as if he were ashamed to be working convicts and he had little to
say to her these days.
Scarlett was worried by the change that was coming over him. There
were gray hairs in his bright head now and a tired slump in his shoulders.
And he seldom smiled. He no longer looked the debonair Ashley who had
caught her fancy so many years before. He looked like a man secretly
gnawed by a scarcely endurable pain and there was a grim look about his
mouth that bafﬂed and hurt her. She wanted to drag his head ﬁercely down

on her shoulder, stroke the graying hair and cry: “Tell me what’s worrying
you! I’ll ﬁx it! I’ll make it right for you!”
But his formal, remote air kept her at arm’s length.