Читать книгу Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром - Маргарет Митчелл - Страница 2

Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men admired her charm. In her face were the delicate features of her mother of French descent, and the heavy ones of her Irish father. But it was an attractive face, with a pointed chin. Her eyes were pale green with black lashes. Above them, her thick black brows went upward. She had magnolia-white skin – so prized by Southern women of Georgia[1].

Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green dress matched the flat-heeled green slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta[2]. The dress showed the seventeen-inch waist, and the basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years.

On either side of her, the twin brothers sat in their chairs, laughing and talking. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.

Their faces were typical of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books. Raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, and drinking like a gentleman were the things that mattered.

Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than anyone else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their neighbors.

They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome. As for Scarlett, she had not opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville Female Academy the year before.

“I know you two don’t care about being expelled, or Tom either,” she said. “But what about Boyd? He wants to get an education. He’ll never get finished at this rate.”

“It don’t matter much,” answered Brent carelessly. “We had to come home before the term was out anyway.”

“Why?”

“The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day, and you don’t suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you?”

“You know there isn’t going to be any war,” said Scarlett, bored. “It’s all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come to – to – an – agreement with Mr. Lincoln[3] about the Confederacy[4]. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us to fight. There won’t be any war, and I’m tired of hearing about it.”

“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly.

Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.

“If you say ‘war’ just once more, I’ll go in the house and shut the door. I’ve never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as ‘war,’ unless it’s ‘secession.’ Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter[5] and States’ Rights and Abe Lincoln and their old Troop[6] till I get so bored I could scream! And I’m mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say ‘war’ again, I’ll go in the house.”

The boys apologized for boring her. Indeed, war was men’s business, not ladies’.

Then Scarlett went back with interest to their immediate situation.

“What did your mother say about you two being expelled again?”

The boys looked uncomfortable. “Well,” said Stuart, “she hasn’t had a chance to say anything yet. Tom and us left home early this morning before she got up.”

“Do you suppose she’ll hit Boyd?” Scarlett, like the rest of the County, could never get used to the way small Mrs. Tarleton bullied her grown sons and occasionally whipped them. Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on her hands not only a large cotton plantation, a hundred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse-breeding farm in the state as well. She was hot-tempered, and while no one was permitted to whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and then didn’t do the boys any harm.

“Of course she won’t hit Boyd. Ma ought to stop licking us! We’re nineteen and Tom’s twenty-one, and she acts like we’re six years old.”

“Will your mother ride her new horse to the Wilkes barbecue tomorrow?”

“She wants to, but Pa says he’s too dangerous. And, anyway, the girls won’t let her. They want to see her going to one party at least like a lady, riding in the carriage.”

“I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “There’s nothing worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.”

“Oh, it’ll be clear tomorrow,” said Stuart. “Look at that sunset. I never saw one redder. You can always tell weather by sunsets.”

They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald O’Hara’s newly plowed cotton fields toward the red horizon. Spring had come early that year. Already the plowing was nearly finished and the moist hungry earth was waiting for the cotton seeds.

To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds of negro voices, as the field hands and mules came in from the fields. Scarlett’s mother, Ellen O’Hara, went toward the smokehouse where she would ration out the food to the home-coming hands. There was the click of china and the rattle of silver as Pork, the valet-butler of Tara, laid the table for supper.

The twins realized it was time they were starting home.

“Look, Scarlett. About tomorrow,” said Brent. “You haven’t promised all dances, have you?”

“Well, I have! How did I know you all would be home?

I couldn’t risk being a wallflower just waiting on you two.”

“You a wallflower!” The boys laughed.

“Now, come on, promise us all the waltzes and the supper,” grinned Brent.

“If you’ll promise, we’ll tell you a secret,” said Stuart.

“What?” cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.

“Is it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it is, you know we promised not to tell.”

“Well, Miss Pitty told us.”

“Miss Who?”

“You know, Ashley Wilkes’ cousin who lives in Atlanta, Miss Pittypat Hamilton – Charles and Melanie Hamilton’s aunt.”

“I do, and a sillier old lady I never met in all my life.”

“Well, when we were in Atlanta yesterday, she told us there was going to be an engagement announced tomorrow night at the Wilkes ball.”

“Oh. I know about that,” said Scarlett in disappointment. “That silly nephew of hers, Charlie Hamilton, and Honey Wilkes. Everybody’s known for years that they’d get married some time.”

“But it isn’t his engagement that’s going to be announced,” said Stuart triumphantly. “It’s Ashley’s to Charlie’s sister, Miss Melanie!”

Scarlett’s face did not change but her lips went white.

“Miss Pitty told us they hadn’t intended announcing it till next year, because Miss Melly hasn’t been very well; but with all the war talk going around, everybody in both families thought it would be better to get married soon. Now, Scarlett, we’ve told you the secret, so you’ve got to promise to eat supper with us.”

“Of course I will,” Scarlett said automatically.

“And all the waltzes?”

“All.”

“You’re sweet! I’ll bet the other boys will be hopping mad.”

They were so filled with enthusiasm by their success that some time had passed before they realized that Scarlett was having very little to say. The atmosphere had somehow changed.

Finally, the boys bowed, shook hands and told Scarlett they’d be over at the Wilkeses’ early in the morning, waiting for her. Then they mounted their horses and went down the road at a gallop, waving their hats and yelling back to her.

They rode along in silence for a while when Brent turned to Stu.

“It looked to me like she was mighty glad to see us when we came.”

“I thought so, too.”

“And then, about a half-hour ago, she got kind of quiet, like she had a headache.”

“I noticed that. Do you suppose we said something that made her mad?”

They both thought for a minute.

“I can’t think of anything. Besides, when Scarlett gets mad, everybody knows it.”

“But do you suppose,” Stu said, “that maybe Ashley hadn’t told her he was going to announce the engagement tomorrow night and she was mad at him for not telling her, an old friend, before he told everybody else?”

“Well, maybe. But Scarlett must have known he was going to marry Miss Melly sometime. The Wilkes and Hamiltons always marry their own cousins.”

“But I’m sorry she didn’t ask us to supper. I swear I don’t want to go home and listen to Ma talk about us being expelled.”

Until the previous summer, Stuart had courted India Wilkes, Ashley’s sister. Both families felt that perhaps the cool India Wilkes would have a quieting eff ect on him. But Brent had not been satisfied. He liked India but he thought her plain, and he simply could not fall in love with her himself to keep Stuart company.

Then, last summer at a political speaking in a grove of oak trees at Jonesboro, they both suddenly became aware of Scarlett O’Hara. They had known her for years, and, since their childhood, she had been a favorite playmate, for she could ride horses and climb trees almost as well as they. But now to their amazement she had become a grown-up young lady and quite the most charming one in all the world.

They noticed for the first time how her green eyes danced, how deep her dimples were when she laughed, how tiny her hands and feet and what a small waist she had. Their clever remarks sent her into merry laughter. It was a memorable day in the life of the twins. Now they were both in love with her. It was a situation which interested the neighbors and annoyed their mother, who had no liking for Scarlett.

The troop of cavalry had been organized three months before, the very day that Georgia seceded from the Union, and since then the recruits had been waiting for war. Everyone had his own idea on its name, just as everyone had ideas about the color and cut of the uniforms. But to the end of this organization they were known simply as “The Troop.”

The officers were elected by the members, for no one in the County had had any military experience except a few veterans of the Mexican and Seminole wars and, besides, the Troop would have rejected a veteran as a leader if they had not personally liked him and trusted him. Ashley Wilkes was elected captain, because he was the best rider in the County and because he had a cool head and could keep order. Abel Wynder, a small farmer, was elected a lieutenant. He was a grave giant, illiterate, kindhearted, older than the other boys. There was little snobbery in the Troop. Too many of their fathers and grandfathers had come up to wealth from the small farmer class. Moreover, Abel was the best shot in the Troop, a real sharpshooter who could pick out the eye of a squirrel at seventy-five yards, and, too, he knew all about living outdoors, building fires in the rain, tracking animals and finding water. The Troop valued real worth and moreover, because they liked him, they made him an officer.

In the beginning, the Troop had been recruited exclusively from the sons of planters, each man supplying his own horse, arms, equipment, uniform and body servant. But rich planters were few in the young county of Clayton[7], and it had been necessary to raise more recruits among the sons of small farmers, hunters, trappers, and even poor whites.

These young men were as anxious to fight the Yankees, as were their richer neighbors; but the delicate question of money arose. Few small farmers owned horses. They carried on their farm operations with mules. As for the poor whites, they considered themselves well off if they owned one mule. They lived entirely off the produce of their lands and the game in the swamp, seldom seeing five dollars in cash a year, and horses and uniforms were out of their reach. But they were as proud in their poverty as the planters were in their wealth. So, to save the feelings of all and to bring the Troop up to full strength, every large planter in the County had contributed money to completely outfit the Troop. The upshot of the matter was that every planter agreed to pay for equipping his own sons and a certain number of the others.

The Troop met twice a week in Jonesboro to drill and to pray for the war to begin. There was no need to teach any of the men to shoot. Most Southerners were born with guns in their hands, and lives spent in hunting had made marksmen of them all.

Drill always ended in the saloons of Jonesboro[8], and by nightfall there were so many fights that the officers had to try hard to avoid casualties until the Yankees could inflict them.