Читать книгу Gone with the Wind (Wisehouse Classics Edition) - Маргарет Митчелл - Страница 6

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hat night at supper, Scarlett went through the motions of presiding over the table in her mother’s absence, but her mind was in a ferment over the dreadful news she had heard about Ashley and Melanie. Desperately she longed for her mother’s return from the Slatterys’, for, without her, she felt lost and alone. What right had the Slatterys and their everlasting sickness to take Ellen away from home just at this time when she, Scarlett, needed her so much?

Throughout the dismal meal, Gerald’s booming voice battered against her ears until she thought she could endure it no longer. He had forgotten completely about his conversation with her that afternoon and was carrying on a monologue about the latest news from Fort Sumter, which he punctuated by hammering his fist on the table and waving his arms in the air. Gerald made a habit of dominating the conversation at mealtimes, and usually Scarlett, occupied with her own thoughts, scarcely heard him; but tonight she could not shut out his voice, no matter how much she strained to listen for the sound of carriage wheels that would herald Ellen’s return.

Of course, she did not intend to tell her mother what was so heavy on her heart, for Ellen would be shocked and grieved to know that a daughter of hers wanted a man who was engaged to another girl. But, in the depths of the first tragedy she had ever known, she wanted the very comfort of her mother’s presence. She always felt secure when Ellen was by her, for there was nothing so bad that Ellen could not better it, simply by being there.

She rose suddenly from her chair at the sound of creaking wheels in the driveway and then sank down again as they went on around the house to the back yard. It could not be Ellen, for she would alight at the front steps. Then there was an excited babble of negro voices in the darkness of the yard and high-pitched negro laughter. Looking out the window, Scarlett saw Pork, who had left the room a moment before, holding high a flaring pine knot, while indistinguishable figures descended from a wagon. The laughter and talking rose and fell in the dark night air, pleasant, homely, carefree sounds, gutturally soft, musically shrill. Then feet shuffled up the back-porch stairs and into the passageway leading to the main house, stopping in the hall just outside the dining room. There was a brief interval of whispering, and Pork entered, his usual dignity gone, his eyes rolling and his teeth a-gleam.

“Mist’ Gerald,” he announced, breathing hard, the pride of a bridegroom all over his shining face, “you’ new ‘oman done come.”

“New woman? I didn’t buy any new woman,” declared Gerald, pretending to glare.

“Yassah, you did, Mist’ Gerald! Yassah! An’ she out hyah now wanting ter speak wid you,” answered Pork, giggling and twisting his hands in excitement.

“Well, bring in the bride,” said Gerald, and Pork, turning, beckoned into the hall to his wife, newly arrived from the Wilkes plantation to become part of the household of Tara. She entered, and behind her, almost hidden by her voluminous calico skirts, came her twelve-year-old daughter, squirming against her mother’s legs.

Dilcey was tall and bore herself erectly. She might have been any age from thirty to sixty, so unlined was her immobile bronze face. Indian blood was plain in her features, overbalancing the negroid characteristics. The red color of her skin, narrow high forehead, prominent cheek bones and the hawk-bridged nose which flattened at the end above thick negro lips, all showed the mixture of two races. She was self-possessed and walked with a dignity that surpassed even Mammy’s, for Mammy had acquired her dignity and Dilcey’s was in her blood.

When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as most negroes’ and she chose her words more carefully.

“Good evenin’, young Misses. Mist’ Gerald, I is sorry to ‘sturb you, but I wanted to come here and thank you agin fo’ buyin’ me and my chile. Lots of gentlemens might a’ bought me but they wouldn’t a’ bought my Prissy, too, jes’ to keep me frum grievin’ and I thanks you. I’m gwine do my bes’ fo’ you and show you I ain’t forgettin’.”

“Hum—hurrump,” said Gerald, clearing his throat in embarrassment at being caught openly in an act of kindness.

Dilcey turned to Scarlett and something like a smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes. “Miss Scarlett, Poke done tole me how you ast Mist Gerald to buy me. And so I’m gwine give you my Prissy fo’ yo’ own maid.”

She reached behind her and jerked the little girl forward. She was a brown little creature, with skinny legs like a bird and a myriad of pigtails carefully wrapped with twine sticking stiffly out from her head. She had sharp, knowing eyes that missed nothing and a studiedly stupid look on her face.

“Thank you, Dilcey,” Scarlett replied, “but I’m afraid Mammy will have something to say about that. She’s been my maid ever since I was born.”

“Mammy getting ole,” said Dilcey, with a calmness that would have enraged Mammy. “She a good mammy, but you a young lady now and needs a good maid, and my Prissy been maidin’ fo’ Miss India fo’ a year now. She kin sew and fix hair good as a grown pusson.”

Prodded by her mother, Prissy bobbed a sudden curtsy and grinned at Scarlett, who could not help grinning back.

“A sharp little wench,” she thought, and said aloud: “Thank you, Dilcey, we’ll see about it when Mother comes home.”

“Thankee, Ma’m. I gives you a good night,” said Dilcey and, turning, left the room with her child, Pork dancing attendance. The supper things cleared away, Gerald resumed his oration, but with little satisfaction to himself and none at all to his audience. His thunderous predictions of immediate war and his rhetorical questions as to whether the South would stand for further insults from the Yankees only produced faintly bored, “Yes, Papas” and “No, Pas.” Carreen, sitting on a hassock under the big lamp, was deep in the romance of a girl who had taken the veil after her lover’s death and, with silent tears of enjoyment oozing from her eyes, was pleasurably picturing herself in a white coif. Suellen, embroidering on what she gigglingly called her “hope chest,” was wondering if she could possibly detach Stuart Tarleton from her sister’s side at the barbecue tomorrow and fascinate him with the sweet womanly qualities which she possessed and Scarlett did not. And Scarlett was in a tumult about Ashley.

How could Pa talk on and on about Fort Sumter and the Yankees when he knew her heart was breaking? As usual in the very young, she marveled that people could be so selfishly oblivious to her pain and the world rock along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.

Her mind was as if a cyclone had gone through it, and it seemed strange that the dining room where they sat should be so placid, so unchanged from what it had always been. The heavy mahogany table and sideboards, the massive silver, the bright rag rugs on the shining floor were all in their accustomed places, just as if nothing had happened. It was a friendly and comfortable room and, ordinarily, Scarlett loved the quiet hours which the family spent there after supper; but tonight she hated the sight of it and, if she had not feared her father’s loudly bawled questions, she would have slipped away, down the dark hall to Ellen’s little office and cried out her sorrow on the old sofa.

That was the room that Scarlett liked the best in all the house. There, Ellen sat before her tall secretary each morning, keeping the accounts of the plantation and listening to the reports of Jonas Wilkerson, the overseer. There also the family idled while Ellen’s quill scratched across her ledgers. Gerald in the old rocker, the girls on the sagging cushions of the sofa that was too battered and worn for the front of the house. Scarlett longed to be there now, alone with Ellen, so she could put her head in her mother’s lap and cry in peace. Wouldn’t Mother ever come home?

Then, wheels ground sharply on the graveled driveway, and the soft murmur of Ellen’s voice dismissing the coachman floated into the room. The whole group looked up eagerly as she entered rapidly, her hoops swaying, her face tired and sad. There entered with her the faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet, which seemed always to creep from the folds of her dresses, a fragrance that was always linked in Scarlett’s mind with her mother. Mammy followed at a few paces, the leather bag in her hand, her underlip pushed out and her brow lowering. Mammy muttered darkly to herself as she waddled, taking care that her remarks were pitched too low to be understood but loud enough to register her unqualified disapproval.

“I am sorry I am so late,” said Ellen, slipping her plaid shawl from drooping shoulders and handing it to Scarlett, whose cheek she patted in passing.

Gerald’s face had brightened as if by magic at her entrance.

“Is the brat baptized?” he questioned.

“Yes, and dead, poor thing,” said Ellen. “I feared Emmie would die too, but I think she will live.”

The girls’ faces turned to her, startled and questioning, and Gerald wagged his head philosophically.

“Well, ’tis better so that the brat is dead, no doubt, poor fatherle—”

“It is late. We had better have prayers now,” interrupted Ellen so smoothly that, if Scarlett had not known her mother well, the interruption would have passed unnoticed.

It would be interesting to know who was the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby, but Scarlett knew she would never learn the truth of the matter if she waited to hear it from her mother. Scarlett suspected Jonas Wilkerson, for she had frequently seen him walking down the road with Emmie at nightfall. Jonas was a Yankee and a bachelor, and the fact that he was an overseer forever barred him from any contact with the County social life. There was no family of any standing into which he could marry, no people with whom he could associate except the Slatterys and riffraff like them. As he was several cuts above the Slatterys in education, it was only natural that he should not want to marry Emmie, no matter how often he might walk with her in the twilight.

Scarlett sighed, for her curiosity was sharp. Things were always happening under her mother’s eyes which she noticed no more than if they had not happened at all. Ellen ignored all things contrary to her ideas of propriety and tried to teach Scarlett to do the same, but with poor success.

Ellen had stepped to the mantel to take her rosary beads from the small inlaid casket in which they always reposed when Mammy spoke up with firmness.

“Miss Ellen, you gwine eat some supper befo’ you does any prayin’.”

“Thank you. Mammy, but I am not hungry.”

“Ah gwine fix yo’ supper mahseff an’ you eats it,” said Mammy, her brow furrowed with indignation as she started down the hall for the kitchen. “Poke!” she called, “tell Cookie stir up de fiah. Miss Ellen home.”

As the boards shuddered under her weight, the soliloquy she had been muttering in the front hall grew louder and louder, coming clearly to the ears of the family in the dining room.

“Ah has said time an’ again, it doan do no good doin’ nuthin’ fer w’ite trash. Dey is de shiflesses, mos’ ungrateful passel of no-counts livin’. An’ Miss Ellen got no bizness weahin’ herseff out waitin’ on folks dat did dey be wuth shootin’ dey’d have niggers ter wait on dem. An’ Ah has said—”

Her voice trailed off as she went down the long open passageway, covered only by a roof, that led into the kitchen. Mammy had her own method of letting her owners know exactly where she stood on all matters. She knew it was beneath the dignity of quality white folks to pay the slightest attention to what a darky said when she was just grumbling to herself. She knew that to uphold this dignity, they must ignore what she said, even if she stood in the next room and almost shouted. It protected her from reproof, and it left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to her exact views on any subject.

Pork entered the room, bearing a plate, silver and a napkin. He was followed closely by Jack, a black little boy of ten, hastily buttoning a white linen jacket with one hand and bearing in the other a fly-swisher, made of thin strips of newspaper tied to a reed longer than he was. Ellen had a beautiful peacock-feather fly-brusher, but it was used only on very special occasions and then only after domestic struggle, due to the obstinate conviction of Pork, Cookie and Mammy that peacock feathers were bad luck.

Ellen sat down in the chair which Gerald pulled out for her and four voices attacked her.

“Mother, the lace is loose on my new ball dress and I want to wear it tomorrow night at Twelve Oaks. Won’t you please fix it?”

“Mother, Scarlett’s new dress is prettier than mine and I look like a fright in pink. Why can’t she wear my pink and let me wear her green? She looks all right in pink.”

“Mother, can I stay up for the ball tomorrow night? I’m thirteen now—”

“Mrs. O’Hara, would you believe it—Hush, you girls, before I take me crop to you! Cade Calvert was in Atlanta this morning and he says—will you be quiet and let me be hearing me own voice?—and he says it’s all upset they are there and talking nothing but war, militia drilling, troops forming. And he says the news from Charleston is that they will be putting up with no more Yankee insults.”

Ellen’s tired mouth smiled into the tumult as she addressed herself first to her husband, as a wife should.

“If the nice people of Charleston feel that way, I’m sure we will all feel the same way soon,” she said, for she had a deeply rooted belief that, excepting only Savannah, most of the gentle blood of the whole continent could be found in that small seaport city, a belief shared largely by Charlestonians.

“No, Carreen, next year, dear. Then you can stay up for balls and wear grown-up dresses, and what a good time my little pink cheeks will have! Don’t pout, dear. You can go to the barbecue, remember that, and stay up through supper, but no balls until you are fourteen.

“Give me your gown, Scarlett, I will whip the lace for you after prayers.

“Suellen, I do not like your tone, dear. Your pink gown is lovely and suitable to your complexion, Scarlett’s is to hers. But you may wear my garnet necklace tomorrow night.”

Suellen, behind her mother’s hack, wrinkled her nose triumphantly at Scarlett, who had been planning to beg the necklace for herself. Scarlett put out her tongue at her. Suellen was an annoying sister with her whining and selfishness, and had it not been for Ellen’s restraining hand, Scarlett would frequently have boxed her ears.

“Now, Mr. O’Hara, tell me more about what Mr. Calvert said about Charleston,” said Ellen.

Scarlett knew her mother cared nothing at all about war and politics and thought them masculine matters about which no lady could intelligently concern herself. But it gave Gerald pleasure to air his views, and Ellen was unfailingly thoughtful of her husband’s pleasure.

While Gerald launched forth on his news, Mammy set the plates before her mistress, golden-topped biscuits, breast of fried chicken and a yellow yam open and steaming, with melted butter dripping from it. Mammy pinched small Jack, and he hastened to his business of slowly swishing the paper ribbons back and forth behind Ellen. Mammy stood beside the table, watching every forkful that traveled from plate to mouth, as though she intended to force the food down Ellen’s throat should she see signs of flagging. Ellen ate diligently, but Scarlett could see that she was too tired to know what she was eating. Only Mammy’s implacable face forced her to it.

When the dish was empty and Gerald only midway in his remarks on the thievishness of Yankees who wanted to free darkies and yet offered no penny to pay for their freedom, Ellen rose.

“We’ll be having prayers?” he questioned, reluctantly.

“Yes. It is so late—why, it is actually ten o’clock,” as the clock with coughing and tinny thumps marked the hour. “Carreen should have been asleep long ago. The lamp, please, Pork, and my prayer book, Mammy.”

Prompted by Mammy’s hoarse whisper, Jack set his fly-brush in the corner and removed the dishes, while Mammy fumbled in the sideboard drawer for Ellen’s worn prayer book. Pork, tiptoeing, reached the ring in the chain and drew the lamp slowly down until the table top was brightly bathed in light and the ceiling receded into shadows. Ellen arranged her skirts and sank to the floor on her knees, laying the open prayer book on the table before her and clasping her hands upon it. Gerald knelt beside her, and Scarlett and Suellen took their accustomed places on the opposite side of the table, folding their voluminous petticoats in pads under their knees, so they would ache less from contact with the hard floor. Carreen, who was small for her age, could not kneel comfortably at the table and so knelt facing a chair, her elbows on the seat. She liked this position, for she seldom failed to go to sleep during prayers and, in this postures it escaped her mother’s notice.

The house servants shuffled and rustled in the hall to kneel by the doorway, Mammy groaning aloud as she sank down, Pork straight as a ramrod, Rosa and Teena, the maids, graceful in their spreading bright calicoes, Cookie gaunt and yellow beneath her snowy head rag, and Jack, stupid with sleep, as far away from Mammy’s pinching fingers as possible. Their dark eyes gleamed expectantly, for praying with their white folks was one of the events of the day. The old and colorful phrases of the litany with its Oriental imagery meant little to them but it satisfied something in their hearts, and they always swayed when they chanted the responses: “Lord, have mercy on us,” “Christ, have mercy on us.”

Ellen closed her eyes and began praying, her voice rising and falling, lulling and soothing. Heads bowed in the circle of yellow light as Ellen thanked God for the health and happiness of her home, her family and her negroes.

When she had finished her prayers for those beneath the roof of Tara, her father, mother, sisters, three dead babies and “all the poor souls in Purgatory,” she clasped her white beads between long fingers and began the Rosary. Like the rushing of a soft wind, the responses from black throats and white throats rolled back:

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.”

Despite her heartache and the pain of unshed tears, a deep sense of quiet and peace fell upon Scarlett as it always did at this hour. Some of the disappointment of the day and the dread of the morrow departed from her, leaving a feeling of hope. It was not the lifting up of her heart to God that brought this balm, for religion went no more than lip deep with her. It was the sight of her mother’s serene face upturned to the throne of God and His saints and angels, praying for blessings on those whom she loved. When Ellen intervened with Heaven, Scarlett felt certain that Heaven heard.

Ellen finished and Gerald, who could never find his beads at prayer time, began furtively counting his decade on his fingers. As his voice droned on, Scarlett’s thoughts strayed, in spite of herself. She knew she should be examining her conscience. Ellen had taught her that at the end of each day it was her duty to examine her conscience thoroughly, to admit her numerous faults and pray to God for forgiveness and strength never to repeat them. But Scarlett was examining her heart.

She dropped her head upon her folded hands so that her mother could not see her face, and her thoughts went sadly back to Ashley. How could he be planning to marry Melanie when he really loved her, Scarlett? And when he knew how much she loved him? How could he deliberately break her heart?

Then, suddenly, an idea, shining and new, flashed like a comet through her brain.

“Why, Ashley hasn’t an idea that I’m in love with him!”

She almost gasped aloud in the shock of its unexpectedness. Her mind stood still as if paralyzed for a long, breathless instant, and then raced forward.

“How could he know? I’ve always acted so prissy and ladylike and touch-me-not around him he probably thinks I don’t care a thing about him except as a friend. Yes, that’s why he’s never spoken! He thinks his love is hopeless. And that’s why he’s looked so—”

Her mind went swiftly back to those times when she had caught him looking at her in that strange manner, when the gray eyes that were such perfect curtains for his thoughts had been wide and naked and had in them a look of torment and despair.

“He’s been broken hearted because he thinks I’m in love with Brent or Stuart or Cade. And probably he thinks that if he can’t have me, he might as well please his family and marry Melanie. But if he knew I did love him—”

Her volatile spirits shot up from deepest depression to excited happiness. This was the answer to Ashley’s reticence, to his strange conduct. He didn’t know! Her vanity leaped to the aid of her desire to believe, making belief a certainty. If he knew she loved him, he would hasten to her side. She had only to—

“Oh!” she thought rapturously, digging her fingers into her lowered brow. “What a fool I’ve been not to think of this till now! I must think of some way to let him know. He wouldn’t marry her if he knew I loved him! How could he?”

With a start, she realized that Gerald had finished and her mother’s eyes were on her. Hastily she began her decade, telling off the beads automatically but with a depth of emotion in her voice that caused Mammy to open her eyes and shoot a searching glance at her. As she finished her prayers and Suellen, then Carreen, began their decades, her mind was still speeding onward with her entrancing new thought.

Even now, it wasn’t too late! Too often the County had been scandalized by elopements when one or the other of the participating parties was practically at the altar with a third. And Ashley’s engagement had not even been announced yet! Yes, there was plenty of time!

If no love lay between Ashley and Melanie but only a promise given long ago, then why wasn’t it possible for him to break that promise and marry her? Surely he would do it, if he knew that she, Scarlett, loved him. She must find some way to let him know. She would find some way! And then—

Scarlett came abruptly out of her dream of delight, for she had neglected to make the responses and her mother was looking at her reprovingly. As she resumed the ritual, she opened her eyes briefly and cast a quick glance around the room. The kneeling figures, the soft glow of the lamp, the dim shadows where the negroes swayed, even the familiar objects that had been so hateful to her sight an hour ago, in an instant took on the color of her own emotions, and the room seemed once more a lovely place. She would never forget this moment or this scene!

“Virgin most faithful,” her mother intoned. The Litany of the Virgin was beginning, and obediently Scarlett responded: “Pray for us,” as Ellen praised in soft contralto the attributes of the Mother of God.

As always since childhood, this was, for Scarlett, a moment for adoration of Ellen, rather than the Virgin. Sacrilegious though it might be, Scarlett always saw, through her closed eyes, the upturned face of Ellen and not the Blessed Virgin, as the ancient phrases were repeated. “Health of the Sick,” “Seat of Wisdom,” “Refuge of Sinners,” “Mystical Rose”— they were beautiful because they were the attributes of Ellen. But tonight, because of the exaltation of her own spirit, Scarlett found in the whole ceremonial, the softly spoken words, the murmur of the responses, a surpassing beauty beyond any that she had ever experienced before. And her heart went up to God in sincere thankfulness that a pathway for her feet had been opened—out of her misery and straight to the arms of Ashley.

When the last “Amen” sounded, they all rose, somewhat stiffly, Mammy being hauled to her feet by the combined efforts of Teena and Rosa. Pork took a long spiller from the mantelpiece, lit it from the lamp flame and went into the hall. Opposite the winding stair stood a walnut sideboard, too large for use in the dining room, bearing on its wide top several lamps and a long row of candles in candlesticks. Pork lit one lamp and three candles and, with the pompous dignity of a first chamberlain of the royal bedchamber lighting a king and queen to their rooms, he led the procession up the stairs, holding the light high above his head. Ellen, on Gerald’s arm, followed him, and the girls, each taking her own candlestick, mounted after them.

Scarlett entered her room, set the candle on the tall chest of drawers and fumbled in the dark closet for the dancing dress that needed stitching. Throwing it across her arm, she crossed the hall quietly. The door of her parents’ bedroom was slightly ajar and, before she could knock, Ellen’s voice, low but stern, came to her ears.

“Mr. O’Hara, you must dismiss Jonas Wilkerson.”

Gerald exploded. “And where will I be getting another overseer who wouldn’t be cheating me out of my eyeteeth?”

“He must be dismissed, immediately, tomorrow morning. Big Sam is a good foreman and he can take over the duties until you can hire another overseer.”

“Ah, ha!” came Gerald’s voice. “So, I understand! Then the worthy Jonas sired the—”

“He must be dismissed.”

“So, he is the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby,” thought Scarlett. “Oh, well, what else can you expect from a Yankee man and a white-trash girl?”

Then, after a discreet pause which gave Gerald’s splutterings time to die away, she knocked on the door and handed the dress to her mother.

By the time Scarlett had undressed and blown out the candle, her plan for tomorrow had worked itself out in every detail. It was a simple plan, for, with Gerald’s single-mindedness of purpose, her eyes were centered on the goal and she thought only of the most direct steps by which to reach it.

First, she would be “prideful,” as Gerald had commanded. From the moment she arrived at Twelve Oaks, she would be her gayest, most spirited self. No one would suspect that she had ever been downhearted because of Ashley and Melanie. And she would flirt with every man there. That would be cruel to Ashley, but it would make him yearn for her all the more. She wouldn’t overlook a man of marriageable age, from ginger-whiskered old Frank Kennedy, who was Suellen’s beau, on down to shy, quiet, blushing Charles Hamilton, Melanie’s brother. They would swarm around her like bees around a hive, and certainly Ashley would be drawn from Melanie to join the circle of her admirers. Then somehow she would maneuver to get a few minutes alone with him, away from the crowd. She hoped everything would work out that way, because it would be more difficult otherwise. But if Ashley didn’t make the first move, she would simply have to do it herself.

When they were finally alone, he would have fresh in his mind the picture of the other men thronging about her, he would be newly impressed with the fact that every one of them wanted her, and that look of sadness and despair would be in his eyes. Then she would make him happy again by letting him discover that, popular though she was, she preferred him above any other man in all the world. And when she admitted it, modestly and sweetly, she would look a thousand things more. Of course, she would do it all in a ladylike way. She wouldn’t even dream of saying to him boldly that she loved him—that would never do. But the manner of telling him was a detail that troubled her not at all. She had managed such situations before and she could do it again.

Lying in the bed with the moonlight streaming dimly over her, she pictured the whole scene in her mind. She saw the look of surprise and happiness that would come over his face when he realized that she really loved him, and she heard the words he would say asking her to be his wife.

Naturally, she would have to say then that she simply couldn’t think of marrying a man when he was engaged to another girl, but he would insist and finally she would let herself be persuaded. Then they would decide to run off to Jonesboro that very afternoon and—

Why, by this time tomorrow night, she might be Mrs. Ashley Wilkes!

She sat up in bed, hugging her knees, and for a long happy moment she WAS Mrs. Ashley Wilkes—Ashley’s bride! Then a slight chill entered her heart. Suppose it didn’t work out this way? Suppose Ashley didn’t beg her to run away with him? Resolutely she pushed the thought from her mind.

“I won’t think of that now,” she said firmly. “If I think of it now, it will upset me. There’s no reason why things won’t come out the way I want them—if he loves me. And I know he does!”

She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift. She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to vanquish fate.

}

Chapter 5

I

t was ten o’clock in the morning. The day was warm for April and the golden sunlight streamed brilliantly into Scarlett’s room through the blue curtains of the wide windows. The cream-colored walls glowed with light and the depths of the mahogany furniture gleamed deep red like wine, while the floor glistened as if it were glass, except where the rag rugs covered it and they were spots of gay color.

Already summer was in the air, the first hint of Georgia summer when the high tide of spring gives way reluctantly before a fiercer heat. A balmy, soft warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth. Through the window Scarlett could see the bright riot of the twin lanes of daffodils bordering the graveled driveway and the golden masses of yellow jessamine spreading flowery sprangles modestly to the earth like crinolines. The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

Such a glowing morning usually called Scarlett to the window, to lean arms on the broad sill and drink in the scents and sounds of Tara. But, today she had no eye for sun or azure sky beyond a hasty thought, “Thank God, it isn’t raining.” On the bed lay the apple-green, watered-silk ball dress with its festoons of ecru lace, neatly packed in a large cardboard box. It was ready to be carried to Twelve Oaks to be donned before the dancing began, but Scarlett shrugged at the sight of it. If her plans were successful, she would not wear that dress tonight. Long before the ball began, she and Ashley would be on their way to Jonesboro to be married. The troublesome question was—what dress should she wear to the barbecue?

What dress would best set off her charms and make her most irresistible to Ashley? Since eight o’clock she had been trying on and rejecting dresses, and now she stood dejected and irritable in lace pantalets, linen corset cover and three billowing lace and linen petticoats. Discarded garments lay about her on the floor, the bed, the chairs, in bright heaps of color and straying ribbons.

The rose organdie with long pink sash was becoming, but she had worn it last summer when Melanie visited Twelve Oaks and she’d be sure to remember it. And might be catty enough to mention it. The black bombazine, with its puffed sleeves and princess lace collar, set off her white skin superbly, but it did make her look a trifle elderly. Scarlett peered anxiously in the mirror at her sixteen-year-old face as if expecting to see wrinkles and sagging chin muscles. It would never do to appear sedate and elderly before Melanie’s sweet youthfulness. The lavender barred muslin was beautiful with those wide insets of lace and net about the hem, but it had never suited her type. It would suit Carreen’s delicate profile and wishy-washy expression perfectly, but Scarlett felt that it made her look like a schoolgirl. It would never do to appear schoolgirlish beside Melanie’s poised self. The green plaid taffeta, frothing with flounces and each flounce edged in green velvet ribbon, was most becoming, in fact her favorite dress, for it darkened her eyes to emerald. But there was unmistakably a grease spot on the front of the basque. Of course, her brooch could be pinned over the spot, but perhaps Melanie had sharp eyes. There remained varicolored cotton dresses which Scarlett felt were not festive enough for the occasion, ball dresses and the green sprigged muslin she had worn yesterday. But it was an afternoon dress. It was not suitable for a barbecue, for it had only tiny puffed sleeves and the neck was low enough for a dancing dress. But there was nothing else to do but wear it. After all she was not ashamed of her neck and arms and bosom, even if it was not correct to show them in the morning.

As she stood before the mirror and twisted herself about to get a side view, she thought that there was absolutely nothing about her figure to cause her shame. Her neck was short but rounded and her arms plump and enticing. Her breasts, pushed high by her stays, were very nice breasts. She had never had to sew tiny rows of silk ruffles in the lining of her basques, as most sixteen-year-old girls did, to give their figures the desired curves and fullness. She was glad she had inherited Ellen’s slender white hands and tiny feet, and she wished she had Ellen’s height, too, but her own height pleased her very well. What a pity legs could not be shown, she thought, pulling up her petticoats and regretfully viewing them, plump and neat under pantalets. She had such nice legs. Even the girls at the Fayetteville Academy had admitted as much. And as for her waist—there was no one in Fayetteville, Jonesboro or in three counties, for that matter, who had so small a waist.

The thought of her waist brought her back to practical matters. The green muslin measured seventeen inches about the waist, and Mammy had laced her for the eighteen-inch bombazine. Mammy would have to lace her tighter. She pushed open the door, listened and heard Mammy’s heavy tread in the downstairs hall. She shouted for her impatiently, knowing she could raise her voice with impunity, as Ellen was in the smokehouse, measuring out the day’s food to Cookie.

“Some folks thinks as how Ah kin fly,” grumbled Mammy, shuffling up the stairs. She entered puffing, with the expression of one who expects battle and welcomes it. In her large black hands was a tray upon which food smoked, two large yams covered with butter, a pile of buckwheat cakes dripping syrup, and a large slice of ham swimming in gravy. Catching sight of Mammy’s burden, Scarlett’s expression changed from one of minor irritation to obstinate belligerency. In the excitement of trying on dresses she had forgotten Mammy’s ironclad rule that, before going to any party, the O’Hara girls must be crammed so full of food at home they would be unable to eat any refreshments at the party.

“It’s no use. I won’t eat it. You can just take it back to the kitchen.”

Mammy set the tray on the table and squared herself, hands on hips.

“Yas’m, you is! Ah ain’ figgerin’ on havin’ happen whut happen at dat las’ barbecue w’en Ah wuz too sick frum dem chittlins Ah et ter fetch you no tray befo’ you went. You is gwine eat eve’y bite of dis.”

“I am not! Now, come here and lace me tighter because we are late already. I heard the carriage come round to the front of the house.”

Mammy’s tone became wheedling.

“Now, Miss Scarlett, you be good an’ come eat jes’a lil. Miss Carreen an’ Miss Suellen done eat all dey’n.”

“They would,” said Scarlett contemptuously. “They haven’t any more spirit than a rabbit. But I won’t! I’m through with trays. I’m not forgetting the time I ate a whole tray and went to the Calverts’ and they had ice cream out of ice they’d brought all the way from Savannah, and I couldn’t eat but a spoonful. I’m going to have a good time today and eat as much as I please.”

At this defiant heresy, Mammy’s brow lowered with indignation. What a young miss could do and what she could not do were as different as black and white in Mammy’s mind; there was no middle ground of deportment between. Suellen and Carreen were clay in her powerful hands and harkened respectfully to her warning. But it had always been a struggle to teach Scarlett that most of her natural impulses were unladylike. Mammy’s victories over Scarlett were hard-won and represented guile unknown to the white mind.

“Ef you doan care ‘bout how folks talks ‘bout dis fainbly, Ah does,” she rumbled. “Ah ain’ gwine stand by an’ have eve’ybody at de pahty sayin’ how you ain’ fotched up right. Ah has tole you an’ tole you dat you kin allus tell a lady by dat she eat lak a bird. An’ Ah ain’ aimin’ ter have you go ter Mist’ Wilkes’ an’ eat lak a fe’el han’ an’ gobble lak a hawg.”

“Mother is a lady and she eats,” countered Scarlett.

“W’en you is mahied, you kin eat, too,” retorted Mammy. “W’en Miss Ellen yo’ age, she never et nuthin’ w’en she went out, an’ needer yo’ Aunt Pauline nor yo’ Aunt Eulalie. An’ dey all done mahied. Young misses whut eats heavy mos’ gener’ly doan never ketch husbands.”

“I don’t believe it. At that barbecue when you were sick and I didn’t eat beforehand, Ashley Wilkes told me he LIKED to see a girl with a healthy appetite.”

Mammy shook her head ominously.

“Whut gempmums says an’ whut dey thinks is two diffunt things. An’ Ah ain’ noticed Mist’ Ashley axing fer ter mahy you.”

Scarlett scowled, started to speak sharply and then caught herself. Mammy had her there and there was no argument. Seeing the obdurate look on Scarlett’s face, Mammy picked up the tray and, with the bland guile of her race, changed her tactics. As she started for the door, she sighed.

“Well’m, awright. Ah wuz tellin’ Cookie w’ile she wuz a-fixin’ dis tray. ‘You kin sho tell a lady by whut she DOAN eat,’ an’ Ah say ter Cookie. ‘Ah ain’ seed no w’ite lady who et less’n Miss Melly Hamilton did las’ time she wuz visitin’ Mist’ Ashley’— Ah means, visitin’ Miss India.”

Scarlett shot a look of sharp suspicion at her, but Mammy’s broad face carried only a look of innocence and of regret that Scarlett was not the lady Melanie Hamilton was.

“Put down that tray and come lace me tighter,” said Scarlett irritably. “And I’ll try to eat a little afterwards. If I ate now I couldn’t lace tight enough.”

Cloaking her triumph, Mammy set down the tray.

“Whut mah lamb gwine wear?”

“That,” answered Scarlett, pointing at the fluffy mass of green flowered muslin. Instantly Mammy was in arms.

“No, you ain’. It ain’ fittin’ fer mawnin’. You kain show yo’ buzzum befo’ three o’clock an’ dat dress ain’ got no neck an’ no sleeves. An’ you’ll git freckled sho as you born, an’ Ah ain’ figgerin’ on you gittin’ freckled affer all de buttermilk Ah been puttin’ on you all dis winter, bleachin’ dem freckles you got at Savannah settin’ on de beach. Ah sho gwine speak ter yo’ Ma ‘bout you.”

“If you say one word to her before I’m dressed I won’t eat a bite,” said Scarlett coolly. “Mother won’t have time to send me back to change once I’m dressed.”

Mammy sighed resignedly, beholding herself outguessed. Between the two evils, it was better to have Scarlett wear an afternoon dress at a morning barbecue than to have her gobble like a hog.

“Hole onter sumpin’ an’ suck in yo’ breaf,” she commanded.

Scarlett obeyed, bracing herself and catching firm hold of one of the bedposts. Mammy pulled and jerked vigorously and, as the tiny circumference of whalebone-girdled waist grew smaller, a proud, fond look came into her eyes.

“Ain’ nobody got a wais’ lak mah lamb,” she said approvingly. “Eve’y time Ah pulls Miss Suellen littler dan twenty inches, she up an’ faint.”

“Pooh!” gasped Scarlctt, speaking with difficulty. “I never fainted in my life.”

“Well, ‘twouldn’ do no hahm ef you wuz ter faint now an’ den,” advised Mammy. “You is so brash sometimes, Miss Scarlett. Ah been aimin’ ter tell you, it jes’ doan look good de way you doan faint ‘bout snakes an’ mouses an’ sech. Ah doan mean round home but w’en you is out in comp’ny. An’ Ah has tole you an’—”

“Oh, hurry! Don’t talk so much. I’ll catch a husband. See if I don’t, even if I don’t scream and faint. Goodness, but my stays are tight! Put on the dress.”

Mammy carefully dropped the twelve yards of green sprigged muslin over the mountainous petticoats and hooked up the back of the tight, low-cut basque.

“You keep yo’ shawl on yo’ shoulders w’en you is in de sun, an’ doan you go takin’ off yo’ hat w’en you is wahm,” she commanded. “Elsewise you be comin’ home lookin’ brown lak Ole Miz Slattery. Now, you come eat, honey, but doan eat too fas’. No use havin’ it come right back up agin.”

Scarlett obediently sat down before the tray, wondering if she would be able to get any food into her stomach and still have room to breathe. Mammy plucked a large towel from the washstand and carefully tied it around Scarlett’s neck, spreading the white folds over her lap. Scarlett began on the ham, because she liked ham, and forced it down.

“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do. I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired. I’m tired of saying, ‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it. . . . I can’t eat another bite.”

“Try a hot cake,” said Mammy inexorably.

“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”

“Ah specs it’s kase gempmums doan know whut dey wants. Dey jes’ knows whut dey thinks dey wants. An’ givin’ dem whut dey thinks dey wants saves a pile of mizry an’ bein’ a ole maid. An’ dey thinks dey wants mousy lil gals wid bird’s tastes an’ no sense at all. It doan make a gempmum feel lak mahyin’ a lady ef he suspicions she got mo’ sense dan he has.”

“Don’t you suppose men get surprised after they’re married to find that their wives do have sense?”

“Well, it’s too late den. Dey’s already mahied. ‘Sides, gempmums specs dey wives ter have sense.”

“Some day I’m going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don’t like it I don’t care.”

“No, you ain’,” said Mammy grimly. “Not while Ah got breaf. You eat dem cakes. Sop dem in de gravy, honey.”

“I don’t think Yankee girls have to act like such fools. When we were at Saratoga last year, I noticed plenty of them acting like they had right good sense and in front of men, too.”

Mammy snorted.

“Yankee gals! Yas’m, Ah guess dey speaks dey minds awright, but Ah ain’ noticed many of dem gittin’ proposed ter at Saratoga.”

“But Yankees must get married,” argued Scarlett. “They don’t just grow. They must get married and have children. There’s too many of them.”

“Men mahys dem fer dey money,” said Mammy firmly.

Scarlett sopped the wheat cake in the gravy and put it in her mouth. Perhaps there was something to what Mammy said. There must be something in it, for Ellen said the same things, in different and more delicate words. In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends impressed on their daughters the necessity of being helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creatures. Really, it took a lot of sense to cultivate and hold such a pose. Perhaps she had been too brash. Occasionally she had argued with Ashley and frankly aired her opinions. Perhaps this and her healthy enjoyment of walking and riding had turned him from her to the frail Melanie. Perhaps if she changed her tactics—But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she could never respect him as she now did. Any man who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and an “Oh, how wonderful you are!” wasn’t worth having. But they all seemed to like it.

If she had used the wrong tactics with Ashley in the past—well, that was the past and done with. Today she would use different ones, the right ones. She wanted him and she had only a few hours in which to get him. If fainting, or pretending to faint, would do the trick, then she would faint. If simpering, coquetry or empty-headedness would attract him, she would gladly play the flirt and be more empty-headed than even Cathleen Calvert. And if bolder measures were necessary, she would take them. Today was the day!

There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt. Had she been told, she would have been pleased but unbelieving. And the civilization of which she was a part would have been unbelieving too, for at no time, before or since, had so low a premium been placed on feminine naturalness.

As the carriage bore her down the red road toward the Wilkes plantation, Scarlett had a feeling of guilty pleasure that neither her mother nor Mammy was with the party. There would be no one at the barbecue who, by delicately lifted brows or out-thrust underlip, could interfere with her plan of action. Of course, Suellen would be certain to tell tales tomorrow, but if all went as Scarlett hoped, the excitement of the family over her engagement to Ashley or her elopement would more than overbalance their displeasure. Yes, she was very glad Ellen had been forced to stay at home.

Gerald, primed with brandy, had given Jonas Wilkerson his dismissal that morning, and Ellen had remained at Tara to go over the accounts of the plantation before he took his departure. Scarlett had kissed her mother good-by in the little office where she sat before the tall secretary with its paper-stuffed pigeonholes. Jonas Wilkerson, hat in hand, stood beside her, his sallow tight-skinned face hardly concealing the fury of hate that possessed him at being so unceremoniously turned out of the best overseer’s job in the County. And all because of a bit of minor philandering. He had told Gerald over and over that Emmie Slattery’s baby might have been fathered by any one of a dozen men as easily as himself—an idea in which Gerald concurred—but that had not altered his case so far as Ellen was concerned. Jonas hated all Southerners. He hated their cool courtesy to him and their contempt for his social status, so inadequately covered by their courtesy. He hated Ellen O’Hara above anyone else, for she was the epitome of all that he hated in Southerners.

Mammy, as head woman of the plantation, had remained to help Ellen, and it was Dilcey who rode on the driver’s seat beside Toby, the girls’ dancing dresses in a long box across her lap. Gerald rode beside the carriage on his big hunter, warm with brandy and pleased with himself for having gotten through with the unpleasant business of Wilkerson so speedily. He had shoved the responsibility onto Ellen, and her disappointment at missing the barbecue and the gathering of her friends did not enter his mind; for it was a fine spring day and his fields were beautiful and the birds were singing and he felt too young and frolicsome to think of anyone else. Occasionally he burst out with “Peg in a Low-backed Car” and other Irish ditties or the more lugubrious lament for Robert Emmet, “She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps.”

He was happy, pleasantly excited over the prospect of spending the day shouting about the Yankees and the war, and proud of his three pretty daughters in their bright spreading hoop skirts beneath foolish little lace parasols. He gave no thought to his conversation of the day before with Scarlett, for it had completely slipped his mind. He only thought that she was pretty and a great credit to him and that, today, her eyes were as green as the hills of Ireland. The last thought made him think better of himself, for it had a certain poetic ring to it, and so he favored the girls with a loud and slightly off-key rendition of “The Wearin’ o’ the Green.”

Scarlett, looking at him with the affectionate contempt that mothers feel for small swaggering sons, knew that he would be very drunk by sundown. Coming home in the dark, he would try, as usual, to jump every fence between Twelve Oaks and Tara and, she hoped, by the mercy of Providence and the good sense of his horse, would escape breaking his neck. He would disdain the bridge and swim his horse through the river and come home roaring, to be put to bed on the sofa in the office by Pork who always waited up with a lamp in the front hall on such occasions.

He would ruin his new gray broadcloth suit, which would cause him to swear horribly in the morning and tell Ellen at great length how his horse fell off the bridge in the darkness—a palpable lie which would fool no one but which would be accepted by all and make him feel very clever.

Pa is a sweet, selfish, irresponsible darling, Scarlett thought, with a surge of affection for him. She felt so excited and happy this morning that she included the whole world, as well as Gerald, in her affection. She was pretty and she knew it; she would have Ashley for her own before the day was over; the sun was warm and tender and the glory of the Georgia spring was spread before her eyes. Along the roadside the blackberry brambles were concealing with softest green the savage red gulches cut by the winter’s rains, and the bare granite boulders pushing up through the red earth were being draped with sprangles of Cherokee roses and compassed about by wild violets of palest purple hue. Upon the wooded hills above the river, the dogwood blossoms lay glistening and white, as if snow still lingered among the greenery. The flowering crab trees were bursting their buds and rioting from delicate white to deepest pink and, beneath the trees where the sunshine dappled the pine straw, the wild honeysuckle made a varicolored carpet of scarlet and orange and rose. There was a faint wild fragrance of sweet shrub on the breeze and the world smelled good enough to eat.

“I’ll remember how beautiful this day is till I die,” thought Scarlett. “Perhaps it will be my wedding day!”

And she thought with a tingling in her heart how she and Ashley might ride swiftly through this beauty of blossom and greenery this very afternoon, or tonight by moonlight, toward Jonesboro and a preacher. Of course, she would have to be remarried by a priest from Atlanta, but that would be something for Ellen and Gerald to worry about. She quailed a little as she thought how white with mortification Ellen would be at hearing that her daughter had eloped with another girl’s fiance, but she knew Ellen would forgive her when she saw her happiness. And Gerald would scold and bawl but, for all his remarks of yesterday about not wanting her to marry Ashley, he would be pleased beyond words at an alliance between his family and the Wilkes.

“But that’ll be something to worry about after I’m married,” she thought, tossing the worry from her.

It was impossible to feel anything but palpitating joy in this warm sun, in this spring, with the chimneys of Twelve Oaks just beginning to show on the hill across the river.

“I’ll live there all my life and I’ll see fifty springs like this and maybe more, and I’ll tell my children and my grandchildren how beautiful this spring was, lovelier than any they’ll ever see.” She was so happy at this thought that she joined in the last chorus of “The Wearin’ o’ the Green” and won Gerald’s shouted approval.

“I don’t know why you’re so happy this morning,” said Suellen crossly, for the thought still rankled in her mind that she would look far better in Scarlett’s green silk dancing frock than its rightful owner would. And why was Scarlett always so selfish about lending her clothes and bonnets? And why did Mother always back her up, declaring green was not Suellen’s color? “You know as well as I do that Ashley’s engagement is going to be announced tonight. Pa said so this morning. And I know you’ve been sweet on him for months.”

“That’s all you know,” said Scarlett, putting out her tongue and refusing to lose her good humor. How surprised Miss Sue would be by this time tomorrow morning!

“Susie, you know that’s not so,” protested Carreen, shocked. “It’s Brent that Scarlett cares about.”

Scarlett turned smiling green eyes upon her younger sister, wondering how anyone could be so sweet. The whole family knew that Carreen’s thirteen-year-old heart was set upon Brent Tarleton, who never gave her a thought except as Scarlett’s baby sister. When Ellen was not present, the O’Haras teased her to tears about him.

“Darling, I don’t care a thing about Brent,” declared Scarlett, happy enough to be generous. “And he doesn’t care a thing about me. Why, he’s waiting for you to grow up!”

Carreen’s round little face became pink, as pleasure struggled with incredulity.

“Oh, Scarlett, really?”

“Scarlett, you know Mother said Carreen was too young to think about beaux yet, and there you go putting ideas in her head.”

“Well, go and tattle and see if I care,” replied Scarlett. “You want to hold Sissy back, because you know she’s going to be prettier than you in a year or so.”

“You’ll be keeping civil tongues in your heads this day, or I’ll be taking me crop to you,” warned Gerald. “Now whist! Is it wheels I’m hearing? That’ll be the Tarletons or the Fontaines.”

As they neared the intersecting road that came down the thickly wooded hill from Mimosa and Fairhill, the sound of hooves and carriage wheels became plainer and clamorous feminine voices raised in pleasant dispute sounded from behind the screen of trees. Gerald, riding ahead, pulled up his horse and signed to Toby to stop the carriage where the two roads met.

“’Tis the Tarleton ladies,” he announced to his daughters, his florid face abeam, for excepting Ellen there was no lady in the County he liked more than the red-haired Mrs. Tarleton. “And ’tis herself at the reins. Ah, there’s a woman with fine hands for a horse! Feather light and strong as rawhide, and pretty enough to kiss for all that. More’s the pity none of you have such hands,” he added, casting fond but reproving glances at his girls. “With Carreen afraid of the poor beasts and Sue with hands like sadirons when it comes to reins and you, Puss—”

“Well, at any rate I’ve never been thrown,” cried Scarlett indignantly. “And Mrs. Tarleton takes a toss at every hunt.”

“And breaks a collar bone like a man,” said Gerald. “No fainting, no fussing. Now, no more of it, for here she comes.”

He stood up in his stirrups and took off his hat with a sweep, as the Tarleton carriage, overflowing with girls in bright dresses and parasols and fluttering veils, came into view, with Mrs. Tarleton on the box as Gerald had said. With her four daughters, their mammy and their ball dresses in long cardboard boxes crowding the carriage, there was no room for the coachman. And, besides, Beatrice Tarleton never willingly permitted anyone, black or white, to hold reins when her arms were out of slings. Frail, fine-boned, so white of skin that her flaming hair seemed to have drawn all the color from her face into its vital burnished mass, she was nevertheless possessed of exuberant health and untiring energy. She had borne eight children, as red of hair and as full of life as she, and had raised them most successfully, so the County said, because she gave them all the loving neglect and the stern discipline she gave the colts she bred. “Curb them but don’t break their spirits,” was Mrs. Tarleton’s motto.

She loved horses and talked horses constantly. She understood them and handled them better than any man in the County. Colts overflowed the paddock onto the front lawn, even as her eight children overflowed the rambling house on the hill, and colts and sons and daughters and hunting dogs tagged after her as she went about the plantation. She credited her horses, especially her red mare, Nellie, with human intelligence; and if the cares of the house kept her busy beyond the time when she expected to take her daily ride, she put the sugar bowl in the hands of some small pickaninny and said: “Give Nellie a handful and tell her I’ll be out terrectly.”

Except on rare occasions she always wore her riding habit, for whether she rode or not she always expected to ride and in that expectation put on her habit upon arising. Each morning, rain or shine, Nellie was saddled and walked up and down in front of the house, waiting for the time when Mrs. Tarleton could spare an hour away from her duties. But Fairhill was a difficult plantation to manage and spare time hard to get, and more often than not Nellie walked up and down riderless hour after hour, while Beatrice Tarleton went through the day with the skirt of her habit absently looped over her arm and six inches of shining boot showing below it.

Today, dressed in dull black silk over unfashionably narrow hoops, she still looked as though in her habit, for the dress was as severely tailored as her riding costume and the small black hat with its long black plume perched over one warm, twinkling, brown eye was a replica of the battered old hat she used for hunting.

She waved her whip when she saw Gerald and drew her dancing pair of red horses to a halt, and the four girls in the back of the carriage leaned out and gave such vociferous cries of greeting that the team pranced in alarm. To a casual observer it would seem that years had passed since the Tarletons had seen the O’Haras, instead of only two days. But they were a sociable family and liked their neighbors, especially the O’Hara girls. That is, they liked Suellen and Carreen. No girl in the County, with the possible exception of the empty-headed Cathleen Calvert, really liked Scarlett.

In summers, the County averaged a barbecue and ball nearly every week, but to the red-haired Tarletons with their enormous capacity for enjoying themselves, each barbecue and each ball was as exciting as if it were the first they had ever attended. They were a pretty, buxom quartette, so crammed into the carriage that their hoops and flounces overlapped and their parasols nudged and bumped together above their wide leghorn sun hats, crowned with roses and dangling with black velvet chin ribbons. All shades of red hair were represented beneath these hats, Hetty’s plain red hair, Camilla’s strawberry blonde, Randa’s coppery auburn and small Betsy’s carrot top.

“That’s a fine bevy, Ma’m,” said Gerald gallantly, reining his horse alongside the carriage. “But it’s far they’ll go to beat their mother.”

Mrs. Tarleton rolled her red-brown eyes and sucked in her lower lip in burlesqued appreciation, and the girls cried, “Ma, stop making eyes or we’ll tell Pa!” “I vow, Mr. O’Hara, she never gives us a chance when there’s a handsome man like you around!”

Scarlett laughed with the rest at these sallies but, as always, the freedom with which the Tarletons treated their mother came as a shock. They acted as if she were one of themselves and not a day over sixteen. To Scarlett, the very idea of saying such things to her own mother was almost sacrilegious. And yet—and yet—there was something very pleasant about the Tarleton girls’ relations with their mother, and they adored her for all that they criticized and scolded and teased her. Not, Scarlett loyally hastened to tell herself, that she would prefer a mother like Mrs. Tarleton to Ellen, but still it would be fun to romp with a mother. She knew that even that thought was disrespectful to Ellen and felt ashamed of it. She knew no such troublesome thoughts ever disturbed the brains under the four flaming thatches in the carriage and, as always when she felt herself different from her neighbors, an irritated confusion fell upon her.

Quick though her brain was, it was not made for analysis, but she half-consciously realized that, for all the Tarleton girls were as unruly as colts and wild as March hares, there was an unworried single-mindedness about them that was part of their inheritance. On both their mother’s and their father’s side they were Georgians, north Georgians, only a generation away from pioneers. They were sure of themselves and of their environment. They knew instinctively what they were about, as did the Wilkeses, though in widely divergent ways, and in them there was no such conflict as frequently raged in Scarlett’s bosom where the blood of a soft-voiced, overbred Coast aristocrat mingled with the shrewd, earthy blood of an Irish peasant. Scarlett wanted to respect and adore her mother like an idol and to rumple her hair and tease her too. And she knew she should be altogether one way or the other. It was the same conflicting emotion that made her desire to appear a delicate and high-bred lady with boys and to be, as well, a hoyden who was not above a few kisses.

“Where’s Ellen this morning?” asked Mrs. Tarleton.

“She’s after discharging our overseer and stayed home to go over the accounts with him. Where’s himself and the lads?”

“Oh, they rode over to Twelve Oaks hours ago—to sample the punch and see if it was strong enough, I dare say, as if they wouldn’t have from now till tomorrow morning to do it! I’m going to ask John Wilkes to keep them overnight, even if he has to bed them down in the stable. Five men in their cups are just too much for me. Up to three, I do very well but—”

Gerald hastily interrupted to change the subject. He could feel his own daughters snickering behind his back as they remembered in what condition he had come home from the Wilkeses’ last barbecue the autumn before.

“And why aren’t you riding today, Mrs. Tarleton? Sure, you don’t look yourself at all without Nellie. It’s a stentor, you are.”

“A stentor, me ignorant broth of a boy!” cried Mrs. Tarleton, aping his brogue. “You mean a centaur. Stentor was a man with a voice like a brass gong.”

“Stentor or centaur, ’tis no matter,” answered Gerald, unruffled by his error. “And ’tis a voice like brass you have, Ma’m, when you’re urging on the hounds, so it is.”

“That’s one on you, Ma,” said Betty. “I told you you yelled like a Comanche whenever you saw a fox.”

“But not as loud as you yell when Mammy washes your ears,” returned Mrs. Tarleton. “And you sixteen! Well, as to why I’m not riding today, Nellie foaled early this morning.”

“Did she now!” cried Gerald with real interest, his Irishman’s passion for horses shining in his eyes, and Scarlett again felt the sense of shock in comparing her mother with Mrs. Tarleton. To Ellen, mares never foaled nor cows calved. In fact, hens almost didn’t lay eggs. Ellen ignored these matters completely. But Mrs. Tarleton had no such reticences.

“A little filly, was it?”

“No, a fine little stallion with legs two yards long. You must ride over and see him, Mr. O’Hara. He’s a real Tarleton horse. He’s as red as Hetty’s curls.”

“And looks a lot like Betty, too,” said Camilla, and then disappeared shrieking amid a welter of skirts and pantalets and bobbing hats, as Betty, who did have a long face, began pinching her.

“My fillies are feeling their oats this morning,” said Mrs. Tarleton. “They’ve been kicking up their heels ever since we heard the news this morning about Ashley and that little cousin of his from Atlanta. What’s her name? Melanie? Bless the child, she’s a sweet little thing, but I can never remember either her name or her face. Our cook is the broad wife of the Wilkes butler, and he was over last night with the news that the engagement would be announced tonight and Cookie told us this morning. The girls are all excited about it, though I can’t see why. Everybody’s known for years that Ashley would marry her, that is, if he didn’t marry one of his Burr cousins from Macon. Just like Honey Wilkes is going to marry Melanie’s brother, Charles. Now, tell me, Mr. O’Hara, is it illegal for the Wilkes to marry outside of their family? Because if—”

Scarlett did not hear the rest of the laughing words. For one short instant, it was as though the sun had ducked behind a cool cloud, leaving the world in shadow, taking the color out of things. The freshly green foliage looked sickly, the dogwood pallid, and the flowering crab, so beautifully pink a moment ago, faded and dreary. Scarlett dug her fingers into the upholstery of the carriage and for a moment her parasol wavered. It was one thing to know that Ashley was engaged but it was another to hear people talk about it so casually. Then her courage flowed strongly back and the sun came out again and the landscape glowed anew. She knew Ashley loved her. That was certain. And she smiled as she thought how surprised Mrs. Tarleton would be when no engagement was announced that night—how surprised if there were an elopement. And she’d tell neighbors what a sly boots Scarlett was to sit there and listen to her talk about Melanie when all the time she and Ashley—She dimpled at her own thoughts and Betty, who had been watching sharply the effect of her mother’s words, sank back with a small puzzled frown.

“I don’t care what you say, Mr. O’Hara,” Mrs. Tarleton was saying emphatically. “It’s all wrong, this marrying of cousins. It’s bad enough for Ashley to be marrying the Hamilton child, but for Honey to be marrying that pale-looking Charles Hamilton—”

“Honey’ll never catch anybody else if she doesn’t marry Charlie,” said Randa, cruel and secure in her own popularity. “She’s never had another beau except him. And he’s never acted very sweet on her, for all that they’re engaged. Scarlett, you remember how he ran after you last Christmas—”

“Don’t be a cat, Miss,” said her mother. “Cousins shouldn’t marry, even second cousins. It weakens the strain. It isn’t like horses. You can breed a mare to a brother or a sire to a daughter and get good results if you know your blood strains, but in people it just doesn’t work. You get good lines, perhaps, but no stamina. You—”

“Now, Ma’m, I’m taking issue with you on that! Can you name me better people than the Wilkes? And they’ve been intermarrying since Brian Boru was a boy.”

“And high time they stopped it, for it’s beginning to show. Oh, not Ashley so much, for he’s a good-looking devil, though even he—But look at those two washed-out-looking Wilkes girls, poor things! Nice girls, of course, but washed out. And look at little Miss Melanie. Thin as a rail and delicate enough for the wind to blow away and no spirit at all. Not a notion of her own. ‘No, Ma’m!’ ‘Yes, Ma’m!’ That’s all she has to say. You see what I mean? That family needs new blood, fine vigorous blood like my red heads or your Scarlett. Now, don’t misunderstand me. The Wilkes are fine folks in their way, and you know I’m fond of them all, but be frank! They are overbred and inbred too, aren’t they? They’ll do fine on a dry track, a fast track, but mark my words, I don’t believe the Wilkes can run on a mud track. I believe the stamina has been bred out of them, and when the emergency arises I don’t believe they can run against odds. Dry-weather stock. Give me a big horse who can run in any weather! And their intermarrying has made them different from other folks around here. Always fiddling with the piano or sticking their heads in a book. I do believe Ashley would rather read than hunt! Yes, I honestly believe that, Mr. O’Hara! And just look at the bones on them. Too slender. They need dams and sires with strength—”

“Ah-ah-hum,” said Gerald, suddenly and guiltily aware that the conversation, a most interesting and entirely proper one to him, would seem quite otherwise to Ellen. In fact, he knew she would never recover should she learn that her daughters had been exposed to so frank a conversation. But Mrs. Tarleton was, as usual, deaf to all other ideas when pursuing her favorite topic, breeding, whether it be horses or humans.

“I know what I’m talking about because I had some cousins who married each other and I give you my word their children all turned out as popeyed as bullfrogs, poor things. And when my family wanted me to marry a second cousin, I bucked like a colt. I said, ‘No, Ma. Not for me. My children will all have spavins and heaves.’ Well, Ma fainted when I said that about spavins, but I stood firm and Grandma backed me up. She knew a lot about horse breeding too, you see, and said I was right. And she helped me run away with Mr. Tarleton. And look at my children! Big and healthy and not a sickly one or a runt among them, though Boyd is only five feet ten. Now, the Wilkes—”

“Not meaning to change the subject, Ma’m,” broke in Gerald hurriedly, for he had noticed Carreen’s bewildered look and the avid curiosity on Suellen’s face and feared lest they might ask Ellen embarrassing questions which would reveal how inadequate a chaperon he was. Puss, he was glad to notice, appeared to be thinking of other matters as a lady should.

Betty Tarleton rescued him from his predicament.

“Good Heavens, Ma, do let’s get on!” she cried impatiently. “This sun is broiling me and I can just hear freckles popping out on my neck.”

“Just a minute, Ma’m, before you go,” said Gerald. “But what have you decided to do about selling us the horses for the Troop? War may break any day now and the boys want the matter settled. It’s a Clayton County troop and it’s Clayton County horses we want for them. But you, obstinate creature that you are, are still refusing to sell us your fine beasts.”

“Maybe there won’t be any war,” Mrs. Tarleton temporized, her mind diverted completely from the Wilkeses’ odd marriage habits.

“Why, Ma’m, you can’t—”

“Ma,” Betty interrupted again, “can’t you and Mr. O’Hara talk about the horses at Twelve Oaks as well as here?”

“That’s just it, Miss Betty,” said Gerald. “And I won’t be keeping you but one minute by the clock. We’ll be getting to Twelve Oaks in a little bit, and every man there, old and young, wanting to know about the horses. Ah, but it’s breaking me heart to see such a fine pretty lady as your mother so stingy with her beasts! Now, where’s your patriotism, Mrs. Tarleton? Does the Confederacy mean nothing to you at all?”

“Ma,” cried small Betsy, “Randa’s sitting on my dress and I’m getting all wrinkled.”

“Well, push Randa off you, Betsy, and hush. Now, listen to me, Gerald O’Hara,” she retorted, her eyes beginning to snap. “Don’t you go throwing the Confederacy in my face! I reckon the Confederacy means as much to me as it does to you, me with four boys in the Troop and you with none. But my boys can take care of themselves and my horses can’t. I’d gladly give the horses free of charge if I knew they were going to be ridden by boys I know, gentlemen used to thoroughbreds. No, I wouldn’t hesitate a minute. But let my beauties be at the mercy of back-woodsmen and Crackers who are used to riding mules! No, sir! I’d have nightmares thinking they were being ridden with saddle galls and not groomed properly. Do you think I’d let ignorant fools ride my tender-mouthed darlings and saw their mouths to pieces and beat them till their spirits were broken? Why, I’ve got goose flesh this minute, just thinking about it! No, Mr. O’Hara, you’re mighty nice to want my horses, but you’d better go to Atlanta and buy some old plugs for your clodhoppers. They’ll never know the difference.”

“Ma, can’t we please go on?” asked Camilla, joining the impatient chorus. “You know mighty well you’re going to end up giving them your darlings anyhow. When Pa and the boys get through talking about the Confederacy needing them and so on, you’ll cry and let them go.”

Mrs. Tarleton grinned and shook the lines.

“I’ll do no such thing,” she said, touching the horses lightly with the whip. The carriage went off swiftly.

“That’s a fine woman,” said Gerald, putting on his hat and taking his place beside his own carriage. “Drive on, Toby. We’ll wear her down and get the horses yet. Of course, she’s right. She’s right. If a man’s not a gentleman, he’s no business on a horse. The infantry is the place for him. But more’s the pity, there’s not enough planters’ sons in this County to make up a full troop. What did you say, Puss?”

“Pa, please ride behind us or in front of us. You kick up such a heap of dust that we’re choking,” said Scarlett, who felt that she could endure conversation no longer. It distracted her from her thoughts and she was very anxious to arrange both her thoughts and her face in attractive lines before reaching Twelve Oaks. Gerald obediently put spurs to his horse and was off in a red cloud after the Tarleton carriage where he could continue his horsy conversation.

}

Chapter 6

T

hey crossed the river and the carriage mounted the hill. Even before Twelve Oaks came into view Scarlett saw a haze of smoke hanging lazily in the tops of the tall trees and smelled the mingled savory odors of burning hickory logs and roasting pork and mutton.

The barbecue pits, which had been slowly burning since last night, would now be long troughs of rose-red embers, with the meats turning on spits above them and the juices trickling down and hissing into the coals. Scarlett knew that the fragrance carried on the faint breeze came from the grove of great oaks in the rear of the big house. John Wilkes always held his barbecues there, on the gentle slope leading down to the rose garden, a pleasant shady place and a far pleasanter place, for instance, than that used by the Calverts. Mrs. Calvert did not like barbecue food and declared that the smells remained in the house for days, so her guests always sweltered on a flat unshaded spot a quarter of a mile from the house. But John Wilkes, famed throughout the state for his hospitality, really knew how to give a barbecue.

The long trestled picnic tables, covered with the finest of the Wilkeses’ linen, always stood under the thickest shade, with backless benches on either side; and chairs, hassocks and cushions from the house were scattered about the glade for those who did not fancy the benches. At a distance great enough to keep the smoke away from the guests were the long pits where the meats cooked and the huge iron wash-pots from which the succulent odors of barbecue sauce and Brunswick stew floated. Mr. Wilkes always had at least a dozen darkies busy running back and forth with trays to serve the guests. Over behind the barns there was always another barbecue pit, where the house servants and the coachmen and maids of the guests had their own feast of hoecakes and yams and chitterlings, that dish of hog entrails so dear to negro hearts, and, in season, watermelons enough to satiate.

As the smell of crisp fresh pork came to her, Scarlett wrinkled her nose appreciatively, hoping that by the time it was cooked she would feel some appetite. As it was she was so full of food and so tightly laced that she feared every moment she was going to belch. That would be fatal, as only old men and very old ladies could belch without fear of social disapproval.

They topped the rise and the white house reared its perfect symmetry before her, tall of columns, wide of verandas, flat of roof, beautiful as a woman is beautiful who is so sure of her charm that she can be generous and gracious to all. Scarlett loved Twelve Oaks even more than Tara, for it had a stately beauty, a mellowed dignity that Gerald’s house did not possess.

The wide curving driveway was full of saddle horses and carriages and guests alighting and calling greetings to friends. Grinning negroes, excited as always at a party, were leading the animals to the barnyard to be unharnessed and unsaddled for the day. Swarms of children, black and white, ran yelling about the newly green lawn, playing hopscotch and tag and boasting how much they were going to eat. The wide hall which ran from front to back of the house was swarming with people, and as the O’Hara carriage drew up at the front steps, Scarlett saw girls in crinolines, bright as butterflies, going up and coming down the stairs from the second floor, arms about each other’s waists, stopping to lean over the delicate handrail of the banisters, laughing and calling to young men in the hall below them.

Through the open French windows, she caught glimpses of the older women seated in the drawing room, sedate in dark silks as they sat fanning themselves and talking of babies and sicknesses and who had married whom and why. The Wilkes butler, Tom, was hurrying through the halls, a silver tray in his hands, bowing and grinning, as he offered tall glasses to young men in fawn and gray trousers and fine ruffled linen shirts.

The sunny front veranda was thronged with guests. Yes, the whole County was here, thought Scarlett. The four Tarleton boys and their father leaned against the tall columns, the twins, Stuart and Brent, side by side inseparable as usual, Boyd and Tom with their father, James Tarleton. Mr. Calvert was standing close by the side of his Yankee wife, who even after fifteen years in Georgia never seemed to quite belong anywhere. Everyone was very polite and kind to her because he felt sorry for her, but no one could forget that she had compounded her initial error of birth by being the governess of Mr. Calvert’s children. The two Calvert boys, Raiford and Cade, were there with their dashing blonde sister, Cathleen, teasing the dark-faced Joe Fontaine and Sally Munroe, his pretty bride-to-be. Alex and Tony Fontaine were whispering in the ears of Dimity Munroe and sending her into gales of giggles. There were families from as far as Lovejoy, ten miles away, and from Fayetteville and Jonesboro, a few even from Atlanta and Macon. The house seemed bursting with the crowd, and a ceaseless babble of talking and laughter and giggles and shrill feminine squeaks and screams rose and fell.

On the porch steps stood John Wilkes, silver-haired, erect, radiating the quiet charm and hospitality that was as warm and never failing as the sun of Georgia summer. Beside him Honey Wilkes, so called because she indiscriminately addressed everyone from her father to the field hands by that endearment, fidgeted and giggled as she called greetings to the arriving guests.

Honey’s nervously obvious desire to be attractive to every man in sight contrasted sharply with her father’s poise, and Scarlett had the thought that perhaps there was something in what Mrs. Tarleton said, after all. Certainly the Wilkes men got the family looks. The thick deep-gold lashes that set off the gray eyes of John Wilkes and Ashley were sparse and colorless in the faces of Honey and her sister India. Honey had the odd lashless look of a rabbit, and India could be described by no other word than plain.

India was nowhere to be seen, but Scarlett knew she probably was in the kitchen giving final instructions to the servants. Poor India, thought Scarlett, she’s had so much trouble keeping house since her mother died that she’s never had the chance to catch any beau except Stuart Tarleton, and it certainly wasn’t my fault if he thought I was prettier than she.

John Wilkes came down the steps to offer his arm to Scarlett. As she descended from the carriage, she saw Suellen smirk and knew that she must have picked out Frank Kennedy in the crowd.

If I couldn’t catch a better beau than that old maid in britches! she thought contemptuously, as she stepped to the ground and smiled her thanks to John Wilkes.

Frank Kennedy was hurrying to the carriage to assist Suellen, and Suellen was bridling in a way that made Scarlett want to slap her. Frank Kennedy might own more land than anyone in the County and he might have a very kind heart, but these things counted for nothing against the fact that he was forty, slight and nervous and had a thin ginger-colored beard and an old-maidish, fussy way about him. However, remembering her plan, Scarlett smothered her contempt and cast such a flashing smile of greeting at him that he stopped short, his arm outheld to Suellen and goggled at Scarlett in pleased bewilderment.

Scarlett’s eyes searched the crowd for Ashley, even while she made pleasant small talk with John Wilkes, but he was not on the porch. There were cries of greeting from a dozen voices and Stuart and Brent Tarleton moved toward her. The Munroe girls rushed up to exclaim over her dress, and she was speedily the center of a circle of voices that rose higher and higher in efforts to be heard above the din. But where was Ashley? And Melanie and Charles? She tried not to be obvious as she looked about and peered down the hall into the laughing group inside.

As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom. He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built. Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility. When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache. He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished. There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath. She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted. She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead and the wide-set eyes.

She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called: “Rhett! Rhett Butler! Come here! I want you to meet the most hardhearted girl in Georgia.”

Rhett Butler? The name had a familiar sound, somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and she dismissed the thought.

“I must run upstairs and smooth my hair,” she told Stuart and Brent, who were trying to get her cornered from the crowd. “You boys wait for me and don’t run off with any other girl or I’ll be furious.”

She could see that Stuart was going to be difficult to handle today if she flirted with anyone else. He had been drinking and wore the arrogant looking-for-a-fight expression that she knew from experience meant trouble. She paused in the hall to speak to friends and to greet India who was emerging from the back of the house, her hair untidy and tiny beads of perspiration on her forehead. Poor India! It would be bad enough to have pale hair and eyelashes and a jutting chin that meant a stubborn disposition, without being twenty years old and an old maid in the bargain. She wondered if India resented very much her taking Stuart away from her. Lots of people said she was still in love with him, but then you could never tell what a Wilkes was thinking about. If she did resent it, she never gave any sign of it, treating Scarlett with the same slightly aloof, kindly courtesy she had always shown her.

Scarlett spoke pleasantly to her and started up the wide stairs. As she did, a shy voice behind her called her name and, turning, she saw Charles Hamilton. He was a nice-looking boy with a riot of soft brown curls on his white forehead and eyes as deep brown, as clean and as gentle as a collie dog’s. He was well turned out in mustard-colored trousers and black coat and his pleated shirt was topped by the widest and most fashionable of black cravats. A faint blush was creeping over his face as she turned for he was timid with girls. Like most shy men he greatly admired airy, vivacious, always-at-ease girls like Scarlett. She had never given him more than perfunctory courtesy before, and so the beaming smile of pleasure with which she greeted him and the two hands outstretched to his almost took his breath away.

“Why Charles Hamilton, you handsome old thing, you! I’ll bet you came all the way down here from Atlanta just to break my poor heart!”

Charles almost stuttered with excitement, holding her warm little hands in his and looking into the dancing green eyes. This was the way girls talked to other boys but never to him. He never knew why but girls always treated him like a younger brother and were very kind, but never bothered to tease him. He had always wanted girls to flirt and frolic with him as they did with boys much less handsome and less endowed with this world’s goods than he. But on the few occasions when this had happened he could never think of anything to say and he suffered agonies of embarrassment at his dumbness. Then he lay awake at night thinking of all the charming gallantries he might have employed; but he rarely got a second chance, for the girls left him alone after a trial or two.

Even with Honey, with whom he had an unspoken understanding of marriage when he came into his property next fall, he was diffident and silent. At times, he had an ungallant feeling that Honey’s coquetries and proprietary airs were no credit to him, for she was so boy-crazy he imagined she would use them on any man who gave her the opportunity. Charles was not excited over the prospect of marrying her, for she stirred in him none of the emotions of wild romance that his beloved books had assured him were proper for a lover. He had always yearned to be loved by some beautiful, dashing creature full of fire and mischief.

And here was Scarlett O’Hara teasing him about breaking her heart!

He tried to think of something to say and couldn’t, and silently he blessed her because she kept up a steady chatter which relieved him of any necessity for conversation. It was too good to be true.

“Now, you wait right here till I come back, for I want to eat barbecue with you. And don’t you go off philandering with those other girls, because I’m mighty jealous,” came the incredible words from red lips with a dimple on each side; and briskly black lashes swept demurely over green eyes.

“I won’t,” he finally managed to breathe, never dreaming that she was thinking he looked like a calf waiting for the butcher.

Tapping him lightly on the arm with her folded fan, she turned to start up the stairs and her eyes again fell on the man called Rhett Butler who stood alone a few feet away from Charles. Evidently he had overheard the whole conversation, for he grinned up at her as maliciously as a tomcat, and again his eyes went over her, in a gaze totally devoid of the deference she was accustomed to.

“God’s nightgown!” said Scarlett to herself in indignation, using Gerald’s favorite oath. “He looks as if—as if he knew what I looked like without my shimmy,” and, tossing her head, she went up the steps.

In the bedroom where the wraps were laid, she found Cathleen Calvert preening before the mirror and biting her lips to make them look redder. There were fresh roses in her sash that matched her cheeks, and her cornflower-blue eyes were dancing with excitement.

“Cathleen,” said Scarlett, trying to pull the corsage of her dress higher, “who is that nasty man downstairs named Butler?”

“My dear, don’t you know?” whispered Cathleen excitedly, a weather eye on the next room where Dilcey and the Wilkes girls’ mammy were gossiping. “I can’t imagine how Mr. Wilkes must feel having him here, but he was visiting Mr. Kennedy in Jonesboro—something about buying cotton—and, of course, Mr. Kennedy had to bring him along with him. He couldn’t just go off and leave him.”

“What is the matter with him?”

“My dear, he isn’t received!”

“Not really!”

“No.”

Scarlett digested this in silence, for she had never before been under the same roof with anyone who was not received. It was very exciting.

“What did he do?”

“Oh, Scarlett, he has the most terrible reputation. His name is Rhett Butler and he’s from Charleston and his folks are some of the nicest people there, but they won’t even speak to him. Caro Rhett told me about him last summer. He isn’t any kin to her family, but she knows all about him, everybody does. He was expelled from West Point. Imagine! And for things too bad for Caro to know. And then there was that business about the girl he didn’t marry.”

“Do tell me!”

“Darling, don’t you know anything? Caro told me all about it last summer and her mama would die if she thought Caro even knew about it. Well, this Mr. Butler took a Charleston girl out buggy riding. I never did know who she was, but I’ve got my suspicions. She couldn’t have been very nice or she wouldn’t have gone out with him in the late afternoon without a chaperon. And, my dear, they stayed out nearly all night and walked home finally, saying the horse had run away and smashed the buggy and they had gotten lost in the woods. And guess what—”

“I can’t guess. Tell me,” said Scarlett enthusiastically, hoping for the worst.

“He refused to marry her the next day!”

“Oh,” said Scarlett, her hopes dashed.

“He said he hadn’t—er—done anything to her and he didn’t see why he should marry her. And, of course, her brother called him out, and Mr. Butler said he’d rather be shot than marry a stupid fool. And so they fought a duel and Mr. Butler shot the girl’s brother and he died, and Mr. Butler had to leave Charleston and now nobody receives him,” finished Cathleen triumphantly, and just in time, for Dilcey came back into the room to oversee the toilet of her charge.

“Did she have a baby?” whispered Scarlett in Cathleen’s ear.

Cathleen shook her head violently. “But she was ruined just the same,” she hissed back.

I wish I had gotten Ashley to compromise me, thought Scarlett suddenly. He’d be too much of a gentleman not to marry me. But somehow, unbidden, she had a feeling of respect for Rhett Butler for refusing to marry a girl who was a fool.

Scarlett sat on a high rosewood ottoman, under the shade of a huge oak in the rear of the house, her flounces and ruffles billowing about her and two inches of green morocco slippers—all that a lady could show and still remain a lady—peeping from beneath them. She had scarcely touched plate in her hands and seven cavaliers about her. The barbecue had reached its peak and the warm air was full of laughter and talk, the click of silver on porcelain and the rich heavy smells of roasting meats and redolent gravies. Occasionally when the slight breeze veered, puffs of smoke from the long barbecue pits floated over the crowd and were greeted with squeals of mock dismay from the ladies and violent flappings of palmetto fans.

Most of the young ladies were seated with partners on the long benches that faced the tables, but Scarlett, realizing that a girl has only two sides and only one man can sit on each of these sides, had elected to sit apart so she could gather about her as many men as possible.

Under the arbor sat the married women, their dark dresses decorous notes in the surrounding color and gaiety. Matrons, regardless of their ages, always grouped together apart from the bright-eyed girls, beaux and laughter, for there were no married belles in the South. From Grandma Fontaine, who was belching frankly with the privilege of her age, to seventeen-year-old Alice Munroe, struggling against the nausea of a first pregnancy, they had their heads together in the endless genealogical and obstetrical discussions that made such gatherings very pleasant and instructive affairs.

Casting contemptuous glances at them, Scarlett thought that they looked like a clump of fat crows. Married women never had any fun. It did not occur to her that if she married Ashley she would automatically be relegated to arbors and front parlors with staid matrons in dull silks, as staid and dull as they and not a part of the fun and frolicking. Like most girls, her imagination carried her just as far as the altar and no further. Besides, she was too unhappy now to pursue an abstraction.

She dropped her eyes to her plate and nibbled daintily on a beaten biscuit with an elegance and an utter lack of appetite that would have won Mammy’s approval. For all that she had a superfluity of beaux, she had never been more miserable in her life. In some way that she could not understand, her plans of last night had failed utterly so far as Ashley was concerned. She had attracted other beaux by the dozens, but not Ashley, and all the fears of yesterday afternoon were sweeping back upon her, making her heart beat fast and then slow, and color flame and whiten in her cheeks.

Ashley had made no attempt to join the circle about her, in fact she had not had a word alone with him since arriving, or even spoken to him since their first greeting. He had come forward to welcome her when she came into the back garden, but Melanie had been on his arm then, Melanie who hardly came up to his shoulder.

She was a tiny, frailly built girl, who gave the appearance of a child masquerading in her mother’s enormous hoop skirts—an illusion that was heightened by the shy, almost frightened look in her too large brown eyes. She had a cloud of curly dark hair which was so sternly repressed beneath its net that no vagrant tendrils escaped, and this dark mass, with its long widow’s peak, accentuated the heart shape of her face. Too wide across the cheek bones, too pointed at the chin, it was a sweet, timid face but a plain face, and she had no feminine tricks of allure to make observers forget its plainness. She looked—and was—as simple as earth, as good as bread, as transparent as spring water. But for all her plainness of feature and smallness of stature, there was a sedate dignity about her movements that was oddly touching and far older than her seventeen years.

Her gray organdie dress, with its cherry-colored satin sash, disguised with its billows and ruffles how childishly undeveloped her body was, and the yellow hat with long cherry streamers made her creamy skin glow. Her heavy earbobs with their long gold fringe hung down from loops of tidily netted hair, swinging close to her brown eyes, eyes that had the still gleam of a forest pool in winter when brown leaves shine up through quiet water.

She had smiled with timid liking when she greeted Scarlett and told her how pretty her green dress was, and Scarlett had been hard put to be even civil in reply, so violently did she want to speak alone with Ashley. Since then, Ashley had sat on a stool at Melanie’s feet, apart from the other guests, and talked quietly with her, smiling the slow drowsy smile that Scarlett loved. What made matters worse was that under his smile a little sparkle had come into Melanie’s eyes, so that even Scarlett had to admit that she looked almost pretty. As Melanie looked at Ashley, her plain face lit up as with an inner fire, for if ever a loving heart showed itself upon a face, it was showing now on Melanie Hamilton’s.

Scarlett tried to keep her eyes from these two but could not, and after each glance she redoubled her gaiety with her cavaliers, laughing, saying daring things, teasing, tossing her head at their compliments until her earrings danced. She said “fiddle-dee-dee” many times, declared that the truth wasn’t in any of them, and vowed that she’d never believe anything any man told her. But Ashley did not seem to notice her at all. He only looked up at Melanie and talked on, and Melanie looked down at him with an expression that radiated the fact that she belonged to him.

So, Scarlett was miserable.

To the outward eye, never had a girl less cause to be miserable. She was undoubtedly the belle of the barbecue, the center of attention. The furore she was causing among the men, coupled with the heart burnings of the other girls, would have pleased her enormously at any other time.

Charles Hamilton, emboldened by her notice, was firmly planted on her right, refusing to be dislodged by the combined efforts of the Tarleton twins. He held her fan in one hand and his untouched plate of barbecue in the other and stubbornly refused to meet the eyes of Honey, who seemed on the verge of an outburst of tears. Cade lounged gracefully on her left, plucking at her skirt to attract her attention and staring up with smoldering eyes at Stuart. Already the air was electric between him and the twins and rude words had passed. Frank Kennedy fussed about like a hen with one chick, running back and forth from the shade of the oak to the tables to fetch dainties to tempt Scarlett, as if there were not a dozen servants there for that purpose. As a result, Suellen’s sullen resentment had passed beyond the point of ladylike concealment and she glowered at Scarlett. Small Carreen could have cried because, for all Scarlett’s encouraging words that morning, Brent had done no more than say “Hello, Sis” and jerk her hair ribbon before turning his full attention to Scarlett. Usually he was so kind and treated her with a careless deference that made her feel grown up, and Carreen secretly dreamed of the day when she would put her hair up and her skirts down and receive him as a real beau. And now it seemed that Scarlett had him. The Munroe girls were concealing their chagrin at the defection of the swarthy Fontaine boys, but they were annoyed at the way Tony and Alex stood about the circle, jockeying for a position near Scarlett should any of the others arise from their places.

They telegraphed their disapproval of Scarlett’s conduct to Hetty Tarleton by delicately raised eyebrows. “Fast” was the only word for Scarlett. Simultaneously, the three young ladies raised lacy parasols, said they had had quite enough to eat, thank you, and, laying light fingers on the arms of the men nearest them, clamored sweetly to see the rose garden, the spring and the summerhouse. This strategic retreat in good order was not lost on a woman present or observed by a man.

Scarlett giggled as she saw three men dragged out of the line of her charms to investigate landmarks familiar to the girls from childhood, and cut her eye sharply to see if Ashley had taken note. But he was playing with the ends of Melanie’s sash and smiling up at her. Pain twisted Scarlett’s heart. She felt that she could claw Melanie’s ivory skin till the blood ran and take pleasure in doing it.

As her eyes wandered from Melanie, she caught the gaze of Rhett Butler, who was not mixing with the crowd but standing apart talking to John Wilkes. He had been watching her and when she looked at him he laughed outright. Scarlett had an uneasy feeling that this man who was not received was the only one present who knew what lay behind her wild gaiety and that it was affording him sardonic amusement. She could have clawed him with pleasure too.

“If I can just live through this barbecue till this afternoon,” she thought, “all the girls will go upstairs to take naps to be fresh for tonight and I’ll stay downstairs and get to talk to Ashley. Surely he must have noticed how popular I am.” She soothed her heart with another hope: “Of course, he has to be attentive to Melanie because, after all, she is his cousin and she isn’t popular at all, and if he didn’t look out for her she’d just be a wallflower.”

She took new courage at this thought and redoubled her efforts in the direction of Charles, whose brown eyes glowed down eagerly at her. It was a wonderful day for Charles, a dream day, and he had fallen in love with Scarlett with no effort at all. Before this new emotion, Honey receded into a dim haze. Honey was a shrill-voiced sparrow and Scarlett a gleaming hummingbird. She teased him and favored him and asked him questions and answered them herself, so that he appeared very clever without having to say a word. The other boys were puzzled and annoyed by her obvious interest in him, for they knew Charles was too shy to hitch two consecutive words together, and politeness was being severely strained to conceal their growing rage. Everyone was smoldering, and it would have been a positive triumph for Scarlett, except for Ashley.

When the last forkful of pork and chicken and mutton had been eaten, Scarlett hoped the time had come when India would rise and suggest that the ladies retire to the house. It was two o’clock and the sun was warm overhead, but India, wearied with the three-day preparations for the barbecue, was only too glad to remain sitting beneath the arbor, shouting remarks to a deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville.

A lazy somnolence descended on the crowd. The negroes idled about, clearing the long tables on which the food had been laid. The laughter and talking became less animated and groups here and there fell silent. All were waiting for their hostess to signal the end of the morning’s festivities. Palmetto fans were wagging more slowly, and several gentlemen were nodding from the heat and overloaded stomachs. The barbecue was over and all were content to take their ease while sun was at its height.

In this interval between the morning party and the evening’s ball, they seemed a placid, peaceful lot. Only the young men retained the restless energy which had filled the whole throng a short while before. Moving from group to group, drawling in their soft voices, they were as handsome as blooded stallions and as dangerous. The languor of midday had taken hold of the gathering, but underneath lurked tempers that could rise to killing heights in a second and flare out as quickly. Men and women, they were beautiful and wild, all a little violent under their pleasant ways and only a little tamed.

Some time dragged by while the sun grew hotter, and Scarlett and others looked again toward India. Conversation was dying out when, in the lull, everyone in the grove heard Gerald’s voice raised in furious accents. Standing some little distance away from the barbecue tables, he was at the peak of an argument with John Wilkes.

“God’s nightgown, man! Pray for a peaceable settlement with the Yankees after we’ve fired on the rascals at Fort Sumter? Peaceable? The South should show by arms that she cannot be insulted and that she is not leaving the Union by the Union’s kindness but by her own strength!”

“Oh, my God!” thought Scarlett. “He’s done it! Now, we’ll all sit here till midnight.”

In an instant, the somnolence had fled from the lounging throng and something electric went snapping through the air. The men sprang from benches and chairs, arms in wide gestures, voices clashing for the right to be heard above other voices. There had been no talk of politics or impending war all during the morning, because of Mr. Wilkes’ request that the ladies should not be bored. But now Gerald had bawled the words “Fort Sumter,” and every man present forgot his host’s admonition.

“Of course we’ll fight—” “Yankee thieves—” “We could lick them in a month—” “Why, one Southerner can lick twenty Yankees—” “Teach them a lesson they won’t soon forget—” “Peaceably? They won’t let us go in peace—” “No, look how Mr. Lincoln insulted our Commissioners!” “Yes, kept them hanging around for weeks—swearing he’d have Sumter evacuated!” “They want war; we’ll make them sick of war—” And above all the voices, Gerald’s boomed. All Scarlett could hear was “States’ rights, by God!” shouted over and over. Gerald was having an excellent time, but not his daughter.

Secession, war—these words long since had become acutely boring to Scarlett from much repetition, but now she hated the sound of them, for they meant that the men would stand there for hours haranguing one another and she would have no chance to corner Ashley. Of course there would be no war and the men all knew it. They just loved to talk and hear themselves talk.

Charles Hamilton had not risen with the others and, finding himself comparatively alone with Scarlett, he leaned closer and, with the daring born of new love, whispered a confession.

“Miss O’Hara—I— I had already decided that if we did fight, I’d go over to South Carolina and join a troop there. It’s said that Mr. Wade Hampton is organizing a cavalry troop, and of course I would want to go with him. He’s a splendid person and was my father’s best friend.”

Scarlett thought, “What am I supposed to do—give three cheers?” for Charles’ expression showed that he was baring his heart’s secrets to her. She could think of nothing to say and so merely looked at him, wondering why men were such fools as to think women interested in such matters. He took her expression to mean stunned approbation and went on rapidly, daringly—

“If I went—would—would you be sorry, Miss O’Hara?”

“I should cry into my pillow every night,” said Scarlett, meaning to be flippant, but he took the statement at face value and went red with pleasure. Her hand was concealed in the folds of her dress and he cautiously wormed his hand to it and squeezed it, overwhelmed at his own boldness and at her acquiescence.

“Would you pray for me?”

“What a fool!” thought Scarlett bitterly, casting a surreptitious glance about her in the hope of being rescued from the conversation.

“Would you?”

“Oh—yes, indeed, Mr. Hamilton. Three Rosaries a night, at least!”

Charles gave a swift look about him, drew in his breath, stiffened the muscles of his stomach. They were practically alone and he might never get another such opportunity. And, even given another such Godsent occasion, his courage might fail him.

“Miss O’Hara—I must tell you something. I— I love you!”

“Um?” said Scarlett absently, trying to peer through the crowd of arguing men to where Ashley still sat talking at Melanie’s feet.

“Yes!” whispered Charles, in a rapture that she had neither laughed, screamed nor fainted, as he had always imagined young girls did under such circumstances. “I love you! You are the most—the most—” and he found his tongue for the first time in his life. “The most beautiful girl I’ve ever known and the sweetest and the kindest, and you have the dearest ways and I love you with all my heart. I cannot hope that you could love anyone like me but, my dear Miss O’Hara, if you can give me any encouragement, I will do anything in the world to make you love me. I will—”

Charles stopped, for he couldn’t think of anything difficult enough of accomplishment to really prove to Scarlett the depth of his feeling, so he said simply: “I want to marry you.”

Scarlett came back to earth with a jerk, at the sound of the word “marry.” She had been thinking of marriage and of Ashley, and she looked at Charles with poorly concealed irritation. Why must this calf-like fool intrude his feelings on this particular day when she was so worried she was about to lose her mind? She looked into the pleading brown eyes and she saw none of the beauty of a shy boy’s first love, of the adoration of an ideal come true or the wild happiness and tenderness that were sweeping through him like a flame. Scarlett was used to men asking her to marry them, men much more attractive than Charles Hamilton, and men who had more finesse than to propose at a barbecue when she had more important matters on her mind. She only saw a boy of twenty, red as a beet and looking very silly. She wished that she could tell him how silly he looked. But automatically, the words Ellen had taught her to say in such emergencies rose to her lips and casting down her eyes, from force of long habit, she murmured: “Mr. Hamilton, I am not unaware of the honor you have bestowed on me in wanting me to become your wife, but this is all so sudden that I do not know what to say.”

That was a neat way of smoothing a man’s vanity and yet keeping him on the string, and Charles rose to it as though such bait were new and he the first to swallow it.

“I would wait forever! I wouldn’t want you unless you were quite sure. Please, Miss O’Hara, tell me that I may hope!”

“Um,” said Scarlett, her sharp eyes noting that Ashley, who had not risen to take part in the war talk, was smiling up at Melanie. If this fool who was grappling for her hand would only keep quiet for a moment, perhaps she could hear what they were saying. She must hear what they said. What did Melanie say to him that brought that look of interest to his eyes?

Charles’ words blurred the voices she strained to hear.

“Oh, hush!” she hissed at him, pinching his hand and not even looking at him.

Startled, at first abashed, Charles blushed at the rebuff and then, seeing how her eyes were fastened on his sister, he smiled. Scarlett was afraid someone might hear his words. She was naturally embarrassed and shy, and in agony lest they be overheard. Charles felt a surge of masculinity such as he had never experienced, for this was the first time in his life that he had ever embarrassed any girl. The thrill was intoxicating. He arranged his face in what he fancied was an expression of careless unconcern and cautiously returned Scarlett’s pinch to show that he was man of the world enough to understand and accept her reproof.

She did not even feel his pinch, for she could hear clearly the sweet voice that was Melanie’s chief charm: “I fear I cannot agree with you about Mr. Thackeray’s works. He is a cynic. I fear he is not the gentleman Mr. Dickens is.”

What a silly thing to say to a man, thought Scarlett, ready to giggle with relief. Why, she’s no more than a bluestocking and everyone knows what men think of bluestockings. . . . The way to get a man interested and to hold his interest was to talk about him, and then gradually lead the conversation around to yourself—and keep it there. Scarlett would have felt some cause for alarm if Melanie had been saying: “How wonderful you are!” or “How do you ever think of such things? My little ole brain would bust if I even tried to think about them!” But here she was, with a man at her feet, talking as seriously as if she were in church. The prospect looked brighter to Scarlett, so bright in fact that she turned beaming eyes on Charles and smiled from pure joy. Enraptured at this evidence of her affection, he grabbed up her fan and plied it so enthusiastically her hair began to blow about untidily.

“Ashley, you have not favored us with your opinion,” said Jim Tarleton, turning from the group of shouting men, and with an apology Ashley excused himself and rose. There was no one there so handsome, thought Scarlett, as she marked how graceful was his negligent pose and how the sun gleamed on his gold hair and mustache. Even the older men stopped to listen to his words.

“Why, gentlemen, if Georgia fights, I’ll go with her. Why else would I have joined the Troop?” he said. His gray eyes opened wide and their drowsiness disappeared in an intensity that Scarlett had never seen before. “But, like Father, I hope the Yankees will let us go in peace and that there will be no fighting—” He held up his hand with a smile, as a babel of voices from the Fontaine and Tarleton boys began. “Yes, yes, I know we’ve been insulted and lied to—but if we’d been in the Yankees’ shoes and they were trying to leave the Union, how would we have acted? Pretty much the same. We wouldn’t have liked it.”

“There he goes again,” thought Scarlett. “Always putting himself in the other fellow’s shoes.” To her, there was never but one fair side to an argument. Sometimes, there was no understanding Ashley.

“Let’s don’t be too hot headed and let’s don’t have any war. Most of the misery of the world has been caused by wars. And when the wars were over, no one ever knew what they were all about.”

Scarlett sniffed. Lucky for Ashley that he had an unassailable reputation for courage, or else there’d be trouble. As she thought this, the clamor of dissenting voices rose up about Ashley, indignant, fiery.

Under the arbor, the deaf old gentleman from Fayetteville punched India.

“What’s it all about? What are they saying?”

“War!” shouted India, cupping her hand to his ear. “They want to fight the Yankees!”

“War, is it?” he cried, fumbling about him for his cane and heaving himself out of his chair with more energy than he had shown in years. “I’ll tell ‘um about war. I’ve been there.” It was not often that Mr. McRae had the opportunity to talk about war, the way his women folks shushed him.

He stumped rapidly to the group, waving his cane and shouting and, because he could not hear the voices about him, he soon had undisputed possession of the field.

“You fire-eating young bucks, listen to me. You don’t want to fight. I fought and I know. Went out in the Seminole War and was a big enough fool to go to the Mexican War, too. You all don’t know what war is. You think it’s riding a pretty horse and having the girls throw flowers at you and coming home a hero. Well, it ain’t. No, sir! It’s going hungry, and getting the measles and pneumonia from sleeping in the wet. And if it ain’t measles and pneumonia, it’s your bowels. Yes sir, what war does to a man’s bowels—dysentery and things like that—”

The ladies were pink with blushes. Mr. McRae was a reminder of a cruder era, like Grandma Fontaine and her embarrassingly loud belches, an era everyone would like to forget.

“Run get your grandpa,” hissed one of the old gentleman’s daughters to a young girl standing near by. “I declare,” she whispered to the fluttering matrons about her, “he gets worse every day. Would you believe it, this very morning he said to Mary—and she’s only sixteen: ‘Now, Missy . . .’” And the voice went off into a whisper as the granddaughter slipped out to try to induce Mr. McRae to return to his seat in the shade.

Of all the group that milled about under the trees, girls smiling excitedly, men talking impassionedly, there was only one who seemed calm. Scarlett’s eyes turned to Rhett Butler, who leaned against a tree, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets. He stood alone, since Mr. Wilkes had left his side, and had uttered no word as the conversation grew hotter. The red lips under the close-clipped black mustache curled down and there was a glint of amused contempt in his black eyes—contempt, as if he listened to the braggings of children. A very disagreeable smile, Scarlett thought. He listened quietly until Stuart Tarleton, his red hair tousled and his eyes gleaming, repeated: “Why, we could lick them in a month! Gentlemen always fight better than rabble. A month—why, one battle—”

“Gentlemen,” said Rhett Butler, in a flat drawl that bespoke his Charleston birth, not moving from his position against the tree or taking his hands from his pockets, “may I say a word?”

There was contempt in his manner as in his eyes, contempt overlaid with an air of courtesy that somehow burlesqued their own manners.

The group turned toward him and accorded him the politeness always due an outsider.

“Has any one of you gentlemen ever thought that there’s not a cannon factory south of the Mason–Dixon Line? Or how few iron foundries there are in the South? Or woolen mills or cotton factories or tanneries? Have you thought that we would not have a single warship and that the Yankee fleet could bottle up our harbors in a week, so that we could not sell our cotton abroad? But—of course—you gentlemen have thought of these things.”

“Why, he means the boys are a passel of fools!” thought Scarlett indignantly, the hot blood coming to her cheeks.

Evidently, she was not the only one to whom this idea occurred, for several of the boys were beginning to stick out their chins. John Wilkes casually but swiftly came back to his place beside the speaker, as if to impress on all present that this man was his guest and that, moreover, there were ladies present.

“The trouble with most of us Southerners,” continued Rhett Butler, “is that we either don’t travel enough or we don’t profit enough by our travels. Now, of course, all you gentlemen are well traveled. But what have you seen? Europe and New York and Philadelphia and, of course, the ladies have been to Saratoga” (he bowed slightly to the group under the arbor). “You’ve seen the hotels and the museums and the balls and the gambling houses. And you’ve come home believing that there’s no place like the South. As for me, I was Charleston born, but I have spent the last few years in the North.” His white teeth showed in a grin, as though he realized that everyone present knew just why he no longer lived in Charleston, and cared not at all if they did know. “I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who’d be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines—all the things we haven’t got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They’d lick us in a month.”

For a tense moment, there was silence. Rhett Butler removed a fine linen handkerchief from his coat pocket and idly flicked dust from his sleeve. Then an ominous murmuring arose in the crowd and from under the arbor came a humming as unmistakable as that of a hive of newly disturbed bees. Even while she felt the hot blood of wrath still in her cheeks, something in Scarlett’s practical mind prompted the thought that what this man said was right, and it sounded like common sense. Why, she’d never even seen a factory, or known anyone who had seen a factory. But, even if it were true, he was no gentleman to make such a statement—and at a party, too, where everyone was having a good time.

Stuart Tarleton, brows lowering, came forward with Brent close at his heels. Of course, the Tarleton twins had nice manners and they wouldn’t make a scene at a barbecue, even though tremendously provoked. Just the same, all the ladies felt pleasantly excited, for it was so seldom that they actually saw a scene or a quarrel. Usually they had to hear of it third-hand.

“Sir,” said Stuart heavily, “what do you mean?”

Rhett looked at him with polite but mocking eyes.

“I mean,” he answered, “what Napoleon—perhaps you’ve heard of him?—remarked once, ‘God is on the side of the strongest battalion!’” and, turning to John Wilkes, he said with courtesy that was unfeigned: “You promised to show me your library, sir. Would it be too great a favor to ask to see it now? I fear I must go back to Jonesboro early this afternoon where a bit of business calls me.”

He swung about, facing the crowd, clicked his heels together and bowed like a dancing master, a bow that was graceful for so powerful a man, and as full of impertinence as a slap in the face. Then he walked across the lawn with John Wilkes, his black head in the air, and the sound of his discomforting laughter floated back to the group about the tables.

There was a startled silence and then the buzzing broke out again. India rose tiredly from her seat beneath the arbor and went toward the angry Stuart Tarleton. Scarlett could not hear what she said, but the look in her eyes as she gazed up into his lowering face gave Scarlett something like a twinge of conscience. It was the same look of belonging that Melanie wore when she looked at Ashley, only Stuart did not see it. So India did love him. Scarlett thought for an instant that if she had not flirted so blatantly with Stuart at that political speaking a year ago, he might have married India long ere this. But then the twinge passed with the comforting thought that it wasn’t her fault if other girls couldn’t keep their men.

Finally Stuart smiled down at India, an unwilling smile, and nodded his head. Probably India had been pleading with him not to follow Mr. Butler and make trouble. A polite tumult broke out under the trees as the guests arose, shaking crumbs from laps. The married women called to nurses and small children and gathered their broods together to take their departure, and groups of girls started off, laughing and talking, toward the house to exchange gossip in the upstairs bedrooms and to take their naps.

All the ladies except Mrs. Tarleton moved out of the back yard, leaving the shade of oaks and arbor to the men. She was detained by Gerald, Mr. Calvert and the others who wanted an answer from her about the horses for the Troop.

Ashley strolled over to where Scarlett and Charles sat, a thoughtful and amused smile on his face.

“Arrogant devil, isn’t he?” he observed, looking after Butler. “He looks like one of the Borgias.”

Scarlett thought quickly but could remember no family in the County or Atlanta or Savannah by that name.

“I don’t know them. Is he kin to them? Who are they?”

An odd look came over Charles’ face, incredulity and shame struggling with love. Love triumphed as he realized that it was enough for a girl to be sweet and gentle and beautiful, without having an education to hamper her charms, and he made swift answer: “The Borgias were Italians.”

“Oh,” said Scarlett, losing interest, “foreigners.”

She turned her prettiest smile on Ashley, but for some reason he was not looking at her. He was looking at Charles, and there was understanding in his face and a little pity.

Scarlett stood on the landing and peered cautiously over the banisters into the hall below. It was empty. From the bedrooms on the floor above came an unending hum of low voices, rising and falling, punctuated with squeaks of laughter and, “Now, you didn’t, really!” and “What did he say then?” On the beds and couches of the six great bedrooms, the girls were resting, their dresses off, their stays loosed, their hair flowing down their backs. Afternoon naps were a custom of the country and never were they so necessary as on the all-day parties, beginning early in the morning and culminating in a ball. For half an hour, the girls would chatter and laugh, and then servants would pull the shutters and in the warm half-gloom the talk would die to whispers and finally expire in silence broken only by soft regular breathing.

Scarlett had made certain that Melanie was lying down on the bed with Honey and Hetty Tarleton before she slipped into the hall and started down the stairs. From the window on the landing, she could see the group of men sitting under the arbor, drinking from tall glasses, and she knew they would remain there until late afternoon. Her eyes searched the group but Ashley was not among them. Then she listened and she heard his voice. As she had hoped, he was still in the front driveway bidding good-by to departing matrons and children.

Her heart in her throat, she went swiftly down the stairs. What if she should meet Mr. Wilkes? What excuse could she give for prowling about the house when all the other girls were getting their beauty naps? Well, that had to be risked.

As she reached the bottom step, she heard the servants moving about in the dining room under the butler’s orders, lifting out the table and chairs in preparation for the dancing. Across the wide hall was the open door of the library and she sped into it noiselessly. She could wait there until Ashley finished his adieux and then call to him when he came into the house.

The library was in semidarkness, for the blinds had been drawn against the sun. The dim room with towering walls completely filled with dark books depressed her. It was not the place which she would have chosen for a tryst such as she hoped this one would be. Large numbers of books always depressed her, as did people who liked to read large numbers of books. That is—all people except Ashley. The heavy furniture rose up at her in the half-light, high-backed chairs with deep seats and wide arms, made for the tall Wilkes men, squatty soft chairs of velvet with velvet hassocks before them for the girls. Far across the long room before the hearth, the seven-foot sofa, Ashley’s favorite seat, reared its high back, like some huge sleeping animal.

She closed the door except for a crack and tried to make her heart beat more slowly. She tried to remember just exactly what she had planned last night to say to Ashley, but she couldn’t recall anything. Had she thought up something and forgotten it—or had she only planned that Ashley should say something to her? She couldn’t remember, and a sudden cold fright fell upon her. If her heart would only stop pounding in her ears, perhaps she could think of what to say. But the quick thudding only increased as she heard him call a final farewell and walk into the front hall.

All she could think of was that she loved him—everything about him, from the proud lift of his gold head to his slender dark boots, loved his laughter even when it mystified her, loved his bewildering silences. Oh, if only he would walk in on her now and take her in his arms, so she would be spared the need of saying anything. He must love her—“Perhaps if I prayed—” She squeezed her eyes tightly and began gabbling to herself “Hail Mary, full of grace—”

“Why, Scarlett!” said Ashley’s voice, breaking in through the roaring in her ears and throwing her into utter confusion. He stood in the hall peering at her through the partly opened door, a quizzical smile on his face.

“Who are you hiding from—Charles or the Tarletons?”

She gulped. So he had noticed how the men had swarmed about her! How unutterably dear he was standing there with his eyes twinkling, all unaware of her excitement. She could not speak, but she put out a hand and drew him into the room. He entered, puzzled but interested. There was a tenseness about her, a glow in her eyes that he had never seen before, and even in the dim light he could see the rosy flush on her cheeks. Automatically he closed the door behind him and took her hand.

“What is it?” he said, almost in a whisper.

At the touch of his hand, she began to tremble. It was going to happen now, just as she had dreamed it. A thousand incoherent thoughts shot through her mind, and she could not catch a single one to mold into a word. She could only shake and look up into his face. Why didn’t he speak?

“What is it?” he repeated. “A secret to tell me?”

Suddenly she found her tongue and just as suddenly all the years of Ellen’s teachings fell away, and the forthright Irish blood of Gerald spoke from his daughter’s lips.

“Yes—a secret. I love you.”

For an instance there was a silence so acute it seemed that neither of them even breathed. Then the trembling fell away from her, as happiness and pride surged through her. Why hadn’t she done this before? How much simpler than all the ladylike maneuverings she had been taught. And then her eyes sought his.

There was a look of consternation in them, of incredulity and something more—what was it? Yes, Gerald had looked that way the day his pet hunter had broken his leg and he had had to shoot him. Why did she have to think of that now? Such a silly thought. And why did Ashley look so oddly and say nothing? Then something like a well-trained mask came down over his face and he smiled gallantly.

“Isn’t it enough that you’ve collected every other man’s heart here today?” he said, with the old, teasing, caressing note in his voice. “Do you want to make it unanimous? Well, you’ve always had my heart, you know. You cut your teeth on it.”

Something was wrong—all wrong! This was not the way she had planned it. Through the mad tearing of ideas round and round in her brain, one was beginning to take form. Somehow—for some reason—Ashley was acting as if he thought she was just flirting with him. But he knew differently. She knew he did.

“Ashley—Ashley—tell me—you must—oh, don’t tease me now! Have I your heart? Oh, my dear, I lo—”

His hand went across her lips, swiftly. The mask was gone.

“You must not say these things, Scarlett! You mustn’t. You don’t mean them. You’ll hate yourself for saying them, and you’ll hate me for hearing them!”

She jerked her head away. A hot swift current was running through her.

“I couldn’t ever hate you. I tell you I love you and I know you must care about me because—” She stopped. Never before had she seen so much misery in anyone’s face. “Ashley, do you care—you do, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said dully. “I care.”

If he had said he loathed her, she could not have been more frightened. She plucked at his sleeve, speechless.

“Scarlett,” he said, “can’t we go away and forget that we have ever said these things?”

“No,” she whispered. “I can’t. What do you mean? Don’t you want to—to marry me?”

He replied, “I’m going to marry Melanie.”

Somehow she found that she was sitting on the low velvet chair and Ashley, on the hassock at her feet, was holding both her hands in his, in a hard grip. He was saying things—things that made no sense. Her mind was quite blank, quite empty of all the thoughts that had surged through it only a moment before, and his words made no more impression than rain on glass. They fell on unhearing ears, words that were swift and tender and full of pity, like a father speaking to a hurt child.

The sound of Melanie’s name caught in her consciousness and she looked into his crystal-gray eyes. She saw in them the old remoteness that had always baffled her—and a look of self-hatred.

“Father is to announce the engagement tonight. We are to be married soon. I should have told you, but I thought you knew. I thought everyone knew—had known for years. I never dreamed that you—You’ve so many beaux. I thought Stuart—”

Life and feeling and comprehension were beginning to flow back into her.

“But you just said you cared for me.”

His warm hands hurt hers.

“My dear, must you make me say things that will hurt you?”

Her silence pressed him on.

“How can I make you see these things, my dear. You who are so young and unthinking that you do not know what marriage means.”

“I know I love you.”

“Love isn’t enough to make a successful marriage when two people are as different as we are. You would want all of a man, Scarlett, his body, his heart, his soul, his thoughts. And if you did not have them, you would be miserable. And I couldn’t give you all of me. I couldn’t give all of me to anyone. And I would not want all of your mind and your soul. And you would be hurt, and then you would come to hate me—how bitterly! You would hate the books I read and the music I loved, because they took me away from you even for a moment. And I— perhaps I—”

“Do you love her?”

“She is like me, part of my blood, and we understand each other. Scarlett! Scarlett! Can’t I make you see that a marriage can’t go on in any sort of peace unless the two people are alike?”

Some one else had said that: “Like must marry like or there’ll be no happiness.” Who was it? It seemed a million years since she had heard that, but it still did not make sense.

“But you said you cared.”

“I shouldn’t have said it.”

Somewhere in her brain, a slow fire rose and rage began to blot out everything else.

“Well, having been cad enough to say it—”

His face went white.

“I was a cad to say it, as I’m going to marry Melanie. I did you a wrong and Melanie a greater one. I should not have said it, for I knew you wouldn’t understand. How could I help caring for you—you who have all the passion for life that I have not? You who can love and hate with a violence impossible to me? Why you are as elemental as fire and wind and wild things and I—”

She thought of Melanie and saw suddenly her quiet brown eyes with their far-off look, her placid little hands in their black lace mitts, her gentle silences. And then her rage broke, the same rage that drove Gerald to murder and other Irish ancestors to misdeeds that cost them their necks. There was nothing in her now of the well-bred Robillards who could bear with white silence anything the world might cast.

“Why don’t you say it, you coward! You’re afraid to marry me! You’d rather live with that stupid little fool who can’t open her mouth except to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and raise a passel of mealy-mouthed brats just like her! Why—”

“You must not say these things about Melanie!”

“‘I mustn’t’ be damned to you! Who are you to tell me I mustn’t? You coward, you cad, you—You made me believe you were going to marry me—”

“Be fair,” his voice pleaded. “Did I ever—”

She did not want to be fair, although she knew what he said was true. He had never once crossed the borders of friendliness with her and, when she thought of this fresh anger rose, the anger of hurt pride and feminine vanity. She had run after him and he would have none of her. He preferred a whey-faced little fool like Melanie to her. Oh, far better that she had followed Ellen and Mammy’s precepts and never, never revealed that she even liked him—better anything than to be faced with this scorching shame!

She sprang to her feet, her hands clenched and he rose towering over her, his face full of the mute misery of one forced to face realities when realities are agonies.

“I shall hate you till I die, you cad—you lowdown—lowdown—” What was the word she wanted? She could not think of any word bad enough.

“Scarlett—please—”

He put out his hand toward her and, as he did, she slapped him across the face with all the strength she had. The noise cracked like a whip in the still room and suddenly her rage was gone, and there was desolation in her heart.

The red mark of her hand showed plainly on his white tired face. He said nothing but lifted her limp hand to his lips and kissed it. Then he was gone before she could speak again, closing the door softly behind him.

She sat down again very suddenly, the reaction from her rage making her knees feel weak. He was gone and the memory of his stricken face would haunt her till she died.

She heard the soft muffled sound of his footsteps dying away down the long hall, and the complete enormity of her actions came over her. She had lost him forever. Now he would hate her and every time he looked at her he would remember how she threw herself at him when he had given her no encouragement at all.

“I’m as bad as Honey Wilkes,” she thought suddenly, and remembered how everyone, and she more than anyone else, had laughed contemptuously at Honey’s forward conduct. She saw Honey’s awkward wigglings and heard her silly titters as she hung onto boys’ arms, and the thought stung her to new rage, rage at herself, at Ashley, at the world. Because she hated herself, she hated them all with the fury of the thwarted and humiliated love of sixteen. Only a little true tenderness had been mixed into her love. Mostly it had been compounded out of vanity and complacent confidence in her own charms. Now she had lost and, greater than her sense of loss, was the fear that she had made a public spectacle of herself. Had she been as obvious as Honey? Was everyone laughing at her? She began to shake at the thought.

Her hand dropped to a little table beside her, fingering a tiny china rose-bowl on which two china cherubs smirked. The room was so still she almost screamed to break the silence. She must do something or go mad. She picked up the bowl and hurled it viciously across the room toward the fireplace. It barely cleared the tall back of the sofa and splintered with a little crash against the marble mantelpiece.

“This,” said a voice from the depths of the sofa, “is too much.”

Nothing had ever startled or frightened her so much, and her mouth went too dry for her to utter a sound. She caught hold of the back of the chair, her knees going weak under her, as Rhett Butler rose from the sofa where he had been lying and made her a bow of exaggerated politeness.

“It is bad enough to have an afternoon nap disturbed by such a passage as I’ve been forced to hear, but why should my life be endangered?”

He was real. He wasn’t a ghost. But, saints preserve us, he had heard everything! She rallied her forces into a semblance of dignity.

“Sir, you should have made known your presence.”

“Indeed?” His white teeth gleamed and his bold dark eyes laughed at her. “But you were the intruder. I was forced to wait for Mr. Kennedy, and feeling that I was perhaps persona non grata in the back yard, I was thoughtful enough to remove my unwelcome presence here where I thought I would be undisturbed. But, alas!” he shrugged and laughed softly.

Her temper was beginning to rise again at the thought that this rude and impertinent man had heard everything—heard things she now wished she had died before she ever uttered.

“Eavesdroppers—” she began furiously.

“Eavesdroppers often hear highly entertaining and instructive things,” he grinned. “From a long experience in eavesdropping, I—”

“Sir,” she said, “you are no gentleman!”

“An apt observation,” he answered airily. “And, you, Miss, are no lady.” He seemed to find her very amusing, for he laughed softly again. “No one can remain a lady after saying and doing what I have just overheard. However, ladies have seldom held any charms for me. I know what they are thinking, but they never have the courage or lack of breeding to say what they think. And that, in time, becomes a bore. But you, my dear Miss O’Hara, are a girl of rare spirit, very admirable spirit, and I take off my hat to you. I fail to understand what charms the elegant Mr. Wilkes can hold for a girl of your tempestuous nature. He should thank God on bended knee for a girl with your—how did he put it?—‘passion for living,’ but being a poor-spirited wretch—”

“You aren’t fit to wipe his boots!” she shouted in rage.

“And you were going to hate him all your life!” He sank down on the sofa and she heard him laughing.

If she could have killed him, she would have done it. Instead, she walked out of the room with such dignity as she could summon and banged the heavy door behind her.

She went up the stairs so swiftly that when she reached the landing, she thought she was going to faint. She stopped, clutching the banisters, her heart hammering so hard from anger, insult and exertion that it seemed about to burst through her basque. She tried to draw deep breaths but Mammy’s lacings were too tight. If she should faint and they should find her here on the landing, what would they think? Oh, they’d think everything. Ashley and that vile Butler man and those nasty girls who were so jealous! For once in her life, she wished that she carried smelling salts, like the other girls, but she had never even owned a vinaigrette. She had always been so proud of never feeling giddy. She simply could not let herself faint now!

Gradually the sickening feeling began to depart. In a minute, she’d feel all right and then she’d slip quietly into the little dressing room adjoining India’s room, unloose her stays and creep in and lay herself on one of the beds beside the sleeping girls. She tried to quiet her heart and fix her face into more composed lines, for she knew she must look like a crazy woman. If any of the girls were awake, they’d know something was wrong. And no one must ever, ever know that anything had happened.

Through the wide bay window on the lawn she could see the men still lounging in their chairs under the trees and in the shade of the arbor. How she envied them! How wonderful to be a man and never have to undergo miseries such as she had just passed through. As she stood watching them, hot eyed and dizzy, she heard the rapid pounding of a horse’s hooves on the front drive, the scattering of gravel and the sound of an excited voice calling a question to one of the negroes. The gravel flew again and across her vision a man on horseback galloped over the green lawn toward the lazy group under the trees.

Some late-come guest, but why did he ride his horse across the turf that was India’s pride? She could not recognize him, but as he flung himself from the saddle and clutched John Wilkes’ arm, she could see that there was excitement in every line of him. The crowd swarmed about him, tall glasses and palmetto fans abandoned on tables and on the ground. In spite of the distance, she could hear the hubbub of voices, questioning, calling, feel the fever-pitch tenseness of the men. Then above the confused sounds Stuart Tarleton’s voice rose, in an exultant shout “Yee-aay-ee!” as if he were on the hunting field. And she heard for the first time, without knowing it, the Rebel yell.

As she watched, the four Tarletons followed by the Fontaine boys broke from the group and began hurrying toward the stable, yelling as they ran, “Jeems! You, Jeems! Saddle the horses!”

“Somebody’s house must have caught fire,” Scarlett thought. But fire or no fire, her job was to get herself back into the bedroom before she was discovered.

Her heart was quieter now and she tiptoed up the steps into the silent hall. A heavy warm somnolence lay over the house, as if it slept at ease like the girls, until night when it would burst into its full beauty with music and candle flames. Carefully, she eased open the door of the dressing room and slipped in. Her hand was behind her, still holding the knob, when Honey Wilkes’ voice, low pitched, almost in a whisper, came to her through the crack of the opposite door leading into the bedroom.

“I think Scarlett acted as fast as a girl could act today.”

Scarlett felt her heart begin its mad racing again and she clutched her hand against it unconsciously, as if she would squeeze it into submission. “Eavesdroppers often hear highly instructive things,” jibed a memory. Should she slip out again? Or make herself known and embarrass Honey as she deserved? But the next voice made her pause. A team of mules could not have dragged her away when she heard Melanie’s voice.

“Oh, Honey, no! Don’t be unkind. She’s just high spirited and vivacious. I thought her most charming.”

“Oh,” thought Scarlett, clawing her nails into her basque. “To have that mealymouthed little mess take up for me!”

It was harder to bear than Honey’s out-and-out cattiness. Scarlett had never trusted any woman and had never credited any woman except her mother with motives other than selfish ones. Melanie knew she had Ashley securely, so she could well afford to show such a Christian spirit. Scarlett felt it was just Melanie’s way of parading her conquest and getting credit for being sweet at the same time. Scarlett had frequently used the same trick herself when discussing other girls with men, and it had never failed to convince foolish males of her sweetness and unselfishness.

“Well, Miss,” said Honey tartly, her voice rising, “you must be blind.”

“Hush, Honey,” hissed the voice of Sally Munroe. “They’ll hear you all over the house!”

Honey lowered her voice but went on.

“Well, you saw how she was carrying on with every man she could get hold of—even Mr. Kennedy and he’s her own sister’s beau. I never saw the like! And she certainly was going after Charles.” Honey giggled self-consciously. “And you know, Charles and I—”

“Are you really?” whispered voices excitedly.

“Well, don’t tell anybody, girls—not yet!”

There were more gigglings and the bed springs creaked as someone squeezed Honey. Melanie murmured something about how happy she was that Honey would be her sister.

“Well, I won’t be happy to have Scarlett for my sister, because she’s a fast piece if ever I saw one,” came the aggrieved voice of Hefty Tarleton. “But she’s as good as engaged to Stuart. Brent says she doesn’t give a rap about him, but, of course, Brent’s crazy about her, too.”

“If you should ask me,” said Honey with mysterious importance, “there’s only one person she does give a rap about. And that’s Ashley!”

As the whisperings merged together violently, questioning, interrupting, Scarlett felt herself go cold with fear and humiliation. Honey was a fool, a silly, a simpleton about men, but she had a feminine instinct about other women that Scarlett had underestimated. The mortification and hurt pride that she had suffered in the library with Ashley and with Rhett Butler were pin pricks to this. Men could be trusted to keep their mouths shut, even men like Mr. Butler, but with Honey Wilkes giving tongue like a hound in the field, the entire County would know about it before six o’clock. And Gerald had said only last night that he wouldn’t be having the County laughing at his daughter. And how they would all laugh now! Clammy perspiration, starting under her armpits, began to creep down her ribs.

Melanie’s voice, measured and peaceful, a little reproving, rose above the others.

“Honey, you know that isn’t so. And it’s so unkind.”

“It is too, Melly, and if you weren’t always so busy looking for the good in people that haven’t got any good in them, you’d see it. And I’m glad it’s so. It serves her right. All Scarlett O’Hara has ever done has been to stir up trouble and try to get other girls’ beaux. You know mighty well she took Stuart from India and she didn’t want him. And today she tried to take Mr. Kennedy and Ashley and Charles—”

“I must get home!” thought Scarlett. “I must get home!”

If she could only be transferred by magic to Tara and to safety. If she could only be with Ellen, just to see her, to hold onto her skirt, to cry and pour out the whole story in her lap. If she had to listen to another word, she’d rush in and pull out Honey’s straggly pale hair in big handfuls and spit on Melanie Hamilton to show her just what she thought of her charity. But she’d already acted common enough today, enough like white trash—that was where all her trouble lay.

She pressed her hands hard against her skirts, so they would not rustle and backed out as stealthily as an animal. Home, she thought, as she sped down the hall, past the closed doors and still rooms, I must go home.

She was already on the front porch when a new thought brought her up sharply—she couldn’t go home! She couldn’t run away! She would have to see it through, bear all the malice of the girls and her own humiliation and heartbreak. To run away would only give them more ammunition.

She pounded her clenched fist against the tall white pillar beside her, and she wished that she were Samson, so that she could pull down all of Twelve Oaks and destroy every person in it. She’d make them sorry. She’d show them. She didn’t quite see how she’d show them, but she’d do it all the same. She’d hurt them worse than they hurt her.

For the moment, Ashley as Ashley was forgotten. He was not the tall drowsy boy she loved but part and parcel of the Wilkeses, Twelve Oaks, the County—and she hated them all because they laughed. Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.

“I won’t go home,” she thought. “I’ll stay here and I’ll make them sorry. And I’ll never tell Mother. No, I’ll never tell anybody.” She braced herself to go back into the house, to reclimb the stairs and go into another bedroom.

As she turned, she saw Charles coming into the house from the other end of the long hall. When he saw her, he hurried toward her. His hair was tousled and his face near geranium with excitement.

“Do you know what’s happened?” he cried, even before he reached her. “Have you heard? Paul Wilson just rode over from Jonesboro with the news!”

He paused, breathless, as he came up to her. She said nothing and only stared at him.

“Mr. Lincoln has called for men, soldiers—I mean volunteers—seventy-five thousand of them!”

Mr. Lincoln again! Didn’t men ever think about anything that really mattered? Here was this fool expecting her to be excited about Mr. Lincoln’s didoes when her heart was broken and her reputation as good as ruined.

Charles stared at her. Her face was paper white and her narrow eyes blazing like emeralds. He had never seen such fire in any girl’s face, such a glow in anyone’s eyes.

“I’m so clumsy,” he said. “I should have told you more gently. I forgot how delicate ladies are. I’m sorry I’ve upset you so. You don’t feel faint, do you? Can I get you a glass of water?”

“No,” she said, and managed a crooked smile.

“Shall we go sit on the bench?” he asked, taking her arm.

She nodded and he carefully handed her down the front steps and led her across the grass to the iron bench beneath the largest oak in the front yard. How fragile and tender women are, he thought, the mere mention of war and harshness makes them faint. The idea made him feel very masculine and he was doubly gentle as he seated her. She looked so strangely, and there was a wild beauty about her white face that set his heart leaping. Could it be that she was distressed by the thought that he might go to the war? No, that was too conceited for belief. But why did she look at him so oddly? And why did her hands shake as they fingered her lace handkerchief. And her thick sooty lashes—they were fluttering just like the eyes of girls in romances he had read, fluttering with timidity and love.

He cleared his throat three times to speak and failed each time. He dropped his eyes because her own green ones met his so piercingly, almost as if she were not seeing him.

“He has a lot of money,” she was thinking swiftly, as a thought and a plan went through her brain. “And he hasn’t any parents to bother me and he lives in Atlanta. And if I married him right away, it would show Ashley that I didn’t care a rap—that I was only flirting with him. And it would just kill Honey. She’d never, never catch another beau and everybody’d laugh fit to die at her. And it would hurt Melanie, because she loves Charles so much. And it would hurt Stu and Brent—” She didn’t quite know why she wanted to hurt them, except that they had catty sisters. “And they’d all be sorry when I came back here to visit in a fine carriage and with lots of pretty clothes and a house of my own. And they would never, never laugh at me.”

“Of course, it will mean fighting,” said Charles, after several more embarrassed attempts. “But don’t you fret, Miss Scarlett, it’ll be over in a month and we’ll have them howling. Yes, sir! Howling! I wouldn’t miss it for anything. I’m afraid there won’t be much of a ball tonight, because the Troop is going to meet at Jonesboro. The Tarleton boys have gone to spread the news. I know the ladies will be sorry.”

She said, “Oh,” for want of anything better, but it sufficed.

Coolness was beginning to come back to her and her mind was collecting itself. A frost lay over all her emotions and she thought that she would never feel anything warmly again. Why not take this pretty, flushed boy? He was as good as anyone else and she didn’t care. No, she could never care about anything again, not if she lived to be ninety.

“I can’t decide now whether to go with Mr. Wade Hampton’s South Carolina Legion or with the Atlanta Gate City Guard.”

She said, “Oh,” again and their eyes met and the fluttering lashes were his undoing.

“Will you wait for me, Miss Scarlett? It—it would be Heaven just knowing that you were waiting for me until after we licked them!” He hung breathless on her words, watching the way her lips curled up at the corners, noting for the first time the shadows about these corners and thinking what it would mean to kiss them. Her hand, with palm clammy with perspiration, slid into his.

“I wouldn’t want to wait,” she said and her eyes were veiled.

He sat clutching her hand, his mouth wide open. Watching him from under her lashes, Scarlett thought detachedly that he looked like a gigged frog. He stuttered several times, closed his mouth and opened it again, and again became geranium colored.

“Can you possibly love me?”

She said nothing but looked down into her lap, and Charles was thrown into new states of ecstasy and embarrassment. Perhaps a man should not ask a girl such a question. Perhaps it would be unmaidenly for her to answer it. Having never possessed the courage to get himself into such a situation before, Charles was at a loss as to how to act. He wanted to shout and to sing and to kiss her and to caper about the lawn and then run tell everyone, black and white, that she loved him. But he only squeezed her hand until he drove her rings into the flesh.

“You will marry me soon, Miss Scarlett?”

“Um,” she said, fingering a fold of her dress.

“Shall we make it a double wedding with Mel—”

“No,” she said quickly, her eyes glinting up at him ominously. Charles knew again that he had made an error. Of course, a girl wanted her own wedding—not shared glory. How kind she was to overlook his blunderings. If it were only dark and he had the courage of shadows and could kiss her hand and say the things he longed to say.

“When may I speak to your father?”

“The sooner the better,” she said, hoping that perhaps he would release the crushing pressure on her rings before she had to ask him to do it.

He leaped up and for a moment she thought he was going to cut a caper, before dignity claimed him. He looked down at her radiantly, his whole clean simple heart in his eyes. She had never had anyone look at her thus before and would never have it from any other man, but in her queer detachment she only thought that he looked like a calf.

“I’ll go now and find your father,” he said, smiling all over his face. “I can’t wait. Will you excuse me—dear?” The endearment came hard but having said it once, he repeated it again with pleasure.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ll wait here. It’s so cool and nice here.”

He went off across the lawn and disappeared around the house, and she was alone under the rustling oak. From the stables, men were streaming out on horseback, negro servants riding hard behind their masters. The Munroe boys tore past waving their hats, and the Fontaines and Calverts went down the road yelling. The four Tarletons charged across the lawn by her and Brent shouted: “Mother’s going to give us the horses! Yee-aay-ee!” Turf flew and they were gone, leaving her alone again.

The white house reared its tall columns before her, seeming to withdraw with dignified aloofness from her. It would never be her house now. Ashley would never carry her over the threshold as his bride. Oh, Ashley, Ashley! What have I done? Deep in her, under layers of hurt pride and cold practicality, something stirred hurtingly. An adult emotion was being born, stronger than her vanity or her willful selfishness. She loved Ashley and she knew she loved him and she had never cared so much as in that instant when she saw Charles disappearing around the curved graveled walk.

}

Chapter 7

W

ithin two weeks Scarlett had become a wife, and within two months more she was a widow. She was soon released from the bonds she had assumed with so much haste and so little thought, but she was never again to know the careless freedom of her unmarried days. Widowhood had crowded closely on the heels of marriage but, to her dismay, motherhood soon followed.

In after years when she thought of those last days of April, 1861, Scarlett could never quite remember details. Time and events were telescoped, jumbled together like a nightmare that had no reality or reason. Till the day she died there would be blank spots in her memories of those days. Especially vague were her recollections of the time between her acceptance of Charles and her wedding. Two weeks! So short an engagement would have been impossible in times of peace. Then there would have been a decorous interval of a year or at least six months. But the South was aflame with war, events roared along as swiftly as if carried by a mighty wind and the slow tempo of the old days was gone. Ellen had wrung her hands and counseled delay, in order that Scarlett might think the matter over at greater length. But to her pleadings, Scarlett turned a sullen face and a deaf ear. Marry she would! and quickly too. Within two weeks.

Learning that Ashley’s wedding had been moved up from the autumn to the first of May, so he could leave with the Troop as soon as it was called into service, Scarlett set the date of her wedding for the day before his. Ellen protested but Charles pleaded with new-found eloquence, for he was impatient to be off to South Carolina to join Wade Hampton’s Legion, and Gerald sided with the two young people. He was excited by the war fever and pleased that Scarlett had made so good a match, and who was he to stand in the way of young love when there was a war? Ellen, distracted, finally gave in as other mothers throughout the South were doing. Their leisured world had been turned topsy-turvy, and their pleadings, prayers and advice availed nothing against the powerful forces sweeping them along.

The South was intoxicated with enthusiasm and excitement. Everyone knew that one battle would end the war and every young man hastened to enlist before the war should end—hastened to marry his sweetheart before he rushed off to Virginia to strike a blow at the Yankees. There were dozens of war weddings in the County and there was little time for the sorrow of parting, for everyone was too busy and excited for either solemn thoughts or tears. The ladies were making uniforms, knitting socks and rolling bandages, and the men were drilling and shooting. Train loads of troops passed through Jonesboro daily on their way north to Atlanta and Virginia. Some detachments were gaily uniformed in the scarlets and light blues and greens of select social-militia companies; some small groups were in homespun and coonskin caps; others, ununiformed, were in broadcloth and fine linen; all were half-drilled, half-armed, wild with excitement and shouting as though en route to a picnic. The sight of these men threw the County boys into a panic for fear the war would be over before they could reach Virginia, and preparations for the Troop’s departure were speeded.

In the midst of this turmoil, preparations went forward for Scarlett’s wedding and, almost before she knew it, she was clad in Ellen’s wedding dress and veil, coming down the wide stairs of Tara on her father’s arm, to face a house packed full with guests. Afterward she remembered, as from a dream, the hundreds of candles flaring on the walls, her mother’s face, loving, a little bewildered, her lips moving in a silent prayer for her daughter’s happiness, Gerald flushed with brandy and pride that his daughter was marrying both money, a fine name and an old one—and Ashley, standing at the bottom of the steps with Melanie’s arm through his.

When she saw the look on his face, she thought: “This can’t be real. It can’t be. It’s a nightmare. I’ll wake up and find it’s all been a nightmare. I mustn’t think of it now, or I’ll begin screaming in front of all these people. I can’t think now. I’ll think later, when I can stand it—when I can’t see his eyes.”

It was all very dreamlike, the passage through the aisle of smiling people, Charles’ scarlet face and stammering voice and her own replies, so startlingly clear, so cold. And the congratulations afterward and the kissing and the toasts and the dancing—all, all like a dream. Even the feel of Ashley’s kiss upon her cheek, even Melanie’s soft whisper, “Now, we’re really and truly sisters,” were unreal. Even the excitement caused by the swooning spell that overtook Charles’ plump emotional aunt, Miss Pittypat Hamilton, had the quality of a nightmare.

But when the dancing and toasting were finally ended and the dawn was coming, when all the Atlanta guests who could be crowded into Tara and the overseer’s house had gone to sleep on beds, sofas and pallets on the floor and all the neighbors had gone home to rest in preparation for the wedding at Twelve Oaks the next day, then the dreamlike trance shattered like crystal before reality. The reality was the blushing Charles, emerging from her dressing room in his nightshirt, avoiding the startled look she gave him over the high-pulled sheet.

Of course, she knew that married people occupied the same bed but she had never given the matter a thought before. It seemed very natural in the case of her mother and father, but she had never applied it to herself. Now for the first time since the barbecue she realized just what she had brought on herself. The thought of this strange boy whom she hadn’t really wanted to marry getting into bed with her, when her heart was breaking with an agony of regret at her hasty action and the anguish of losing Ashley forever, was too much to be borne. As he hesitatingly approached the bed she spoke in a hoarse whisper.

“I’ll scream out loud if you come near me. I will! I will—at the top of my voice! Get away from me! Don’t you dare touch me!”

So Charles Hamilton spent his wedding night in an armchair in the corner, not too unhappily, for he understood, or thought he understood, the modesty and delicacy of his bride. He was willing to wait until her fears subsided, only—only—He sighed as he twisted about seeking a comfortable position, for he was going away to the war so very soon.

Nightmarish as her own wedding had been, Ashley’s wedding was even worse. Scarlett stood in her apple-green “second-day” dress in the parlor of Twelve Oaks amid the blaze of hundreds of candles, jostled by the same throng as the night before, and saw the plain little face of Melanie Hamilton glow into beauty as she became Melanie Wilkes. Now, Ashley was gone forever. Her Ashley. No, not her Ashley now. Had he ever been hers? It was all so mixed up in her mind and her mind was so tired, so bewildered. He had said he loved her, but what was it that had separated them? If she could only remember. She had stilled the County’s gossiping tongue by marrying Charles, but what did that matter now? It had seemed so important once, but now it didn’t seem important at all. All that mattered was Ashley. Now he was gone and she was married to a man she not only did not love but for whom she had an active contempt.

Oh, how she regretted it all. She had often heard of people cutting off their noses to spite their faces but heretofore it had been only a figure of speech. Now she knew just what it meant. And mingled with her frenzied desire to be free of Charles and safely back at Tara, an unmarried girl again, ran the knowledge that she had only herself to blame. Ellen had tried to stop her and she would not listen.

So she danced through the night of Ashley’s wedding in a daze and said things mechanically and smiled and irrelevantly wondered at the stupidity of people who thought her a happy bride and could not see that her heart was broken. Well, thank God, they couldn’t see!

That night after Mammy had helped her undress and had departed and Charles had emerged shyly from the dressing room, wondering if he was to spend a second night in the horsehair chair, she burst into tears. She cried until Charles climbed into bed beside her and tried to comfort her, cried without words until no more tears would come and at last she lay sobbing quietly on his shoulder.

If there had not been a war, there would have been a week of visiting about the County, with balls and barbecues in honor of the two newly married couples before they set off to Saratoga or White Sulphur for wedding trips. If there had not been a war, Scarlett would have had third-day and fourth-day and fifth-day dresses to wear to the Fontaine and Calvert and Tarleton parties in her honor. But there were no parties now and no wedding trips. A week after the wedding Charles left to join Colonel Wade Hampton, and two weeks later Ashley and the Troop departed, leaving the whole County bereft.

In those two weeks, Scarlett never saw Ashley alone, never had a private word with him. Not even at the terrible moment of parting, when he stopped by Tara on his way to the train, did she have a private talk. Melanie, bonneted and shawled, sedate in newly acquired matronly dignity, hung on his arm and the entire personnel of Tara, black and white, turned out to see Ashley off to the war.

Melanie said: “You must kiss Scarlett, Ashley. She’s my sister now,” and Ashley bent and touched her cheek with cold lips, his face drawn and taut. Scarlett could hardly take any joy from that kiss, so sullen was her heart at Melly’s prompting it. Melanie smothered her with an embrace at parting.

“You will come to Atlanta and visit me and Aunt Pittypat, won’t you? Oh, darling, we want to have you so much! We want to know Charlie’s wife better.”

Five weeks passed during which letters, shy, ecstatic, loving, came from Charles in South Carolina telling of his love, his plans for the future when the war was over, his desire to become a hero for her sake and his worship of his commander, Wade Hampton. In the seventh week, there came a telegram from Colonel Hampton himself, and then a letter, a kind, dignified letter of condolence. Charles was dead. The colonel would have wired earlier, but Charles, thinking his illness a trifling one, did not wish to have his family worried. The unfortunate boy had not only been cheated of the love he thought he had won but also of his high hopes of honor and glory on the field of battle. He had died ignominiously and swiftly of pneumonia, following measles, without ever having gotten any closer to the Yankees than the camp in South Carolina.

In due time, Charles’ son was born and, because it was fashionable to name boys after their fathers’ commanding officers, he was called Wade Hampton Hamilton. Scarlett had wept with despair at the knowledge that she was pregnant and wished that she were dead. But she carried the child through its time with a minimum of discomfort, bore him with little distress and recovered so quickly that Mammy told her privately it was downright common—ladies should suffer more. She felt little affection for the child, hide the fact though she might. She had not wanted him and she resented his coming and, now that he was here, it did not seem possible that he was hers, a part of her.

Though she recovered physically from Wade’s birth in a disgracefully short time, mentally she was dazed and sick. Her spirits drooped, despite the efforts of the whole plantation to revive them. Ellen went about with a puckered, worried forehead and Gerald swore more frequently than usual and brought her useless gifts from Jonesboro. Even old Dr. Fontaine admitted that he was puzzled, after his tonic of sulphur, molasses and herbs failed to perk her up. He told Ellen privately that it was a broken heart that made Scarlett so irritable and listless by turns. But Scarlett, had she wished to speak, could have told them that it was a far different and more complex trouble. She did not tell them that it was utter boredom, bewilderment at actually being a mother and, most of all, the absence of Ashley that made her look so woebegone.

Her boredom was acute and ever present. The County had been devoid of any entertainment or social life ever since the Troop had gone away to war. All of the interesting young men were gone—the four Tarletons, the two Calverts, the Fontaines, the Munroes and everyone from Jonesboro, Fayetteville and Lovejoy who was young and attractive. Only the older men, the cripples and the women were left, and they spent their time knitting and sewing, growing more cotton and corn, raising more hogs and sheep and cows for the army. There was never a sight of a real man except when the commissary troop under Suellen’s middle-aged beau, Frank Kennedy, rode by every month to collect supplies. The men in the commissary were not very exciting, and the sight of Frank’s timid courting annoyed her until she found it difficult to be polite to him. If he and Suellen would only get it over with!

Even if the commissary troop had been more interesting, it would not have helped her situation any. She was a widow and her heart was in the grave. At least, everyone thought it was in the grave and expected her to act accordingly. This irritated her for, try as she would, she could recall nothing about Charles except the dying-calf look on his face when she told him she would marry him. And even that picture was fading. But she was a widow and she had to watch her behavior. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls. She had to be grave and aloof. Ellen had stressed this at great length after catching Frank’s lieutenant swinging Scarlett in the garden swing and making her squeal with laughter. Deeply distressed, Ellen had told her how easily a widow might get herself talked about. The conduct of a widow must be twice as circumspect as that of a matron.

“And God only knows,” thought Scarlett, listening obediently to her mother’s soft voice, “matrons never have any fun at all. So widows might as well be dead.”

A widow had to wear hideous black dresses without even a touch of braid to enliven them, no flower or ribbon or lace or even jewelry, except onyx mourning brooches or necklaces made from the deceased’s hair. And the black crepe veil on her bonnet had to reach to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length. Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud. Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile. And, most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. And should a gentleman be so ill bred as to indicate an interest in her, she must freeze him with a dignified but well-chosen reference to her dead husband. Oh, yes, thought Scarlett, drearily, some widows do remarry eventually, when they are old and stringy. Though Heaven knows how they manage it, with their neighbors watching. And then it’s generally to some desperate old widower with a large plantation and a dozen children.

Marriage was bad enough, but to be widowed—oh, then life was over forever! How stupid people were when they talked about what a comfort little Wade Hampton must be to her, now that Charles was gone. How stupid of them to say that now she had something to live for! Everyone talked about how sweet it was that she had this posthumous token of her love and she naturally did not disabuse their minds. But that thought was farthest from her mind. She had very little interest in Wade and sometimes it was difficult to remember that he was actually hers.

Every morning she woke up and for a drowsy moment she was Scarlett O’Hara again and the sun was bright in the magnolia outside her window and the mockers were singing and the sweet smell of frying bacon was stealing to her nostrils. She was carefree and young again. Then she heard the fretful hungry wail and always—always there was a startled moment when she thought: “Why, there’s a baby in the house!” Then she remembered that it was her baby. It was all very bewildering.

And Ashley! Oh, most of all Ashley! For the first time in her life, she hated Tara, hated the long red road that led down the hill to the river, hated the red fields with springing green cotton. Every foot of ground, every tree and brook, every lane and bridle path reminded her of him. He belonged to another woman and he had gone to the war, but his ghost still haunted the roads in the twilight, still smiled at her from drowsy gray eyes in the shadows of the porch. She never heard the sound of hooves coming up the river road from Twelve Oaks that for a sweet moment she did not think—Ashley!

She hated Twelve Oaks now and once she had loved it. She hated it but she was drawn there, so she could hear John Wilkes and the girls talk about him—hear them read his letters from Virginia. They hurt her but she had to hear them. She disliked the stiff-necked India and the foolish prattling Honey and knew they disliked her equally, but she could not stay away from them. And every time she came home from Twelve Oaks, she lay down on her bed morosely and refused to get up for supper.

It was this refusal of food that worried Ellen and Mammy more than anything else. Mammy brought up tempting trays, insinuating that now she was a widow she might eat as much as she pleased, but Scarlett had no appetite.

When Dr. Fontaine told Ellen gravely that heartbreak frequently led to a decline and women pined away into the grave, Ellen went white, for that fear was what she had carried in her heart.

“Isn’t there anything to be done, Doctor?”

“A change of scene will be the best thing in the world for her,” said the doctor, only too anxious to be rid of an unsatisfactory patient.

So Scarlett, unenthusiastic, went off with her child, first to visit her O’Hara and Robillard relatives in Savannah and then to Ellen’s sisters, Pauline and Eulalie, in Charleston. But she was back at Tara a month before Ellen expected her, with no explanation of her return. They had been kind in Savannah, but James and Andrew and their wives were old and content to sit quietly and talk of a past in which Scarlett had no interest. It was the same with the Robillards, and Charleston was terrible, Scarlett thought.

Aunt Pauline and her husband, a little old man, with a formal, brittle courtesy and the absent air of one living in an older age, lived on a plantation on the river, far more isolated than Tara. Their nearest neighbor was twenty miles away by dark roads through still jungles of cypress swamp and oak. The live oaks with their waving curtains of gray moss gave Scarlett the creeps and always brought to her mind Gerald’s stories of Irish ghosts roaming in shimmering gray mists. There was nothing to do but knit all day and at night listen to Uncle Carey read aloud from the improving works of Mr. Bulwer–Lytton.

Eulalie, hidden behind a high-walled garden in a great house on the Battery in Charleston, was no more entertaining. Scarlett, accustomed to wide vistas of rolling red hills, felt that she was in prison. There was more social life here than at Aunt Pauline’s, but Scarlett did not like the people who called, with their airs and their traditions and their emphasis on family. She knew very well they all thought she was a child of a mesalliance and wondered how a Robillard ever married a newly come Irishman. Scarlett felt that Aunt Eulalie apologized for her behind her back. This aroused her temper, for she cared no more about family than her father. She was proud of Gerald and what he had accomplished unaided except by his shrewd Irish brain.

And the Charlestonians took so much upon themselves about Fort Sumter! Good Heavens, didn’t they realize that if they hadn’t been silly enough to fire the shot that started the war some other fools would have done it? Accustomed to the brisk voices of upland Georgia, the drawling flat voices of the low country seemed affected to her. She thought if she ever again heard voices that said “paams” for “palms” and “hoose” for “house” and “woon’t” for “won’t” and “Maa and Paa” for “Ma and Pa,” she would scream. It irritated her so much that during one formal call she aped Gerald’s brogue to her aunt’s distress. Then she went back to Tara. Better to be tormented with memories of Ashley than Charleston accents.

Ellen, busy night and day, doubling the productiveness of Tara to aid the Confederacy, was terrified when her eldest daughter came home from Charleston thin, white and sharp tongued. She had known heartbreak herself, and night after night she lay beside the snoring Gerald, trying to think of some way to lessen Scarlett’s distress. Charles’ aunt, Miss Pittypat Hamilton, had written her several times, urging her to permit Scarlett to come to Atlanta for a long visit, and now for the first time Ellen considered it seriously.

She and Melanie were alone in a big house “and without male protection,” wrote Miss Pittypat, “now that dear Charlie has gone. Of course, there is my brother Henry but he does not make his home with us. But perhaps Scarlett has told you of Henry. Delicacy forbids my putting more concerning him on paper. Melly and I would feel so much easier and safer if Scarlett were with us. Three lonely women are better than two. And perhaps dear Scarlett could find some ease for her sorrow, as Melly is doing, by nursing our brave boys in the hospitals here—and, of course, Melly and I are longing to see the dear baby . . . .”

So Scarlett’s trunk was packed again with her mourning clothes and off she went to Atlanta with Wade Hampton and his nurse Prissy, a headful of admonitions as to her conduct from Ellen and Mammy and a hundred dollars in Confederate bills from Gerald. She did not especially want to go to Atlanta. She thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and the very idea of living under the same roof with Ashley’s wife was abhorrent. But the County with its memories was impossible now, and any change was welcome.

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