姜一郎享受“性”福生活 cv1446消除不良生活方式-刘慧04
姜一郎
me. And they all look so hangdog and licked. I don’t want a manwho’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-careabout-anything look the soldiers had right after the surrender. They look like they cared a heapabout a heap of things.”
But to her surprise the Simmons boys, who had started a brick kiln, and Kells Whiting, who wasselling a preparation made up in his mother’s kitchen, that was guaranteed to straighten the lankiestnegro hair in six applications, smiled politely, thanked her and refused. It was the same with thedozen others she approached. In desperation she raised the wage she was offering but she was stillrefused. One of Mrs. Merriwether’s nephews observed impertinently that while he didn’tespecially enjoy driving a dray, it was his own dray and he would rather get somewhere under hisown steam than Scarlett’s.
One afternoon, Scarlett pulled up her buggy beside René Picard’s pie wagon and hailed Renéand 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 morerespectable than driving a pie wagon. I’d think, you’d be ashamed.”
“Me, I am dead to shame,” grinned René. “Who would be respectable? All of my days I wasrespectable until ze war set me free lak ze darkies. Nevaire again must I be deegneefied and full ofennui. Free lak ze bird! I lak my pie wagon. I lak my mule. I lak ze dear Yankees who so kindlybuy ze pie of Madame Belle Mère. 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 ofwild 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 mouthtwitching. “Yes, I can just see little Scarlett at her mother’s knee, lisping her lesson, ‘Never sellgood lumber if you can get a better price for bad.’ ”
René roared at this, his small monkey eyes dancing with glee as he whacked Tommy on histwisted back.
“Don’t be impudent,” said Scarlett coldly, for she saw little humor in Tommy’s remark. “Ofcourse, 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 ornot. And running it very well, too. Well, none of us, as far as I can see, are doing what we intendedto do right now, but I think well make out just the same. It’s a poor person and a poor nation thatsits down and cries because life isn’t precisely what they expected it to be. Why don’t you pick upsome enterprising Carpetbagger to work for you, Scarlett? The woods are full of them, Godknows.”
“I don’t want a Carpetbagger. Carpetbaggers will steal anything that isn’t red hot or naileddown. If they amounted to anything they’d have stayed where they were, instead of coming downhere to pick our bones. I want a nice man, from nice folks, who is smart and honest and energeticand—”
“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 roundpegs in square holes but they’ve all got something to do. Something of their own that they’d ratherdo 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 onit,” said Scarlett tartly.
The two men laughed, a bit unwillingly, and it seemed to Scarlett that they drew together inunited masculine disapproval of her. What Tommy said was true, she thought, running over in hermind the men she had approached and the ones she intended to approach. They were all busy, busyat something, working hard, working harder than they would have dreamed possible in the daysbefore the war. They weren’t doing what they wanted to do perhaps, or what was easiest to do, orwhat they had been reared to do, but they were doing something. Times were too hard for men tobe choosy. And if they were sorrowing for lost hopes, longing for lost ways of living, no one knewit but they. They were fighting a new war, a harder war than the one before. And they were caringabout life again, caring with the same urgency and the same violence that animated them beforethe war had cut their lives in two.
“Scarlett,” said Tommy awkwardly, “I do hate to ask a favor of you, after being impudent toyou, 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 goesout and collects his own kindling wood. And I know things are mighty hard with the whole Elsingfamily. I—I do what I can, but you see I’ve got Fanny to support, and then, too, I’ve got mymother and two widowed sisters down in Sparta to look after. Hugh is nice, and you wanted a niceman, 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. Youcould go far and do worse. I think his honesty and his willingness will outweigh his lack ofgumption.”
Scarlett did not answer, for she did not want to be too rude. But to her mind there were few, ifany, qualities that out-weighed gumption.
After she had unsuccessfully canvassed the town and refused the importuning of many eagerCarpetbaggers, she finally decided to take Tommy’s suggestion and ask Hugh Elsing. He had beena dashing and resourceful officer during the war, but two severe wounds and four years of fightingseemed to have
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