40

 

 

 

GONE WITH THE WIND

 

 

This story is set during the American Civil War, and therefore contains characters and their language of the period, and other outdated cultural depictions. If you feel you are likely to be offended by these, do not read any further.

 

PART 40

CHAPTER XLI

 

When the last good-by had been said and the last sound of wheels and hooves died away, Scarlett went into Ellen's office and removed a gleaming object from where she had hidden it the night before between the yellowed papers in the pigeon-holes of the secretary. Hearing Pork sniffling in the dining room as he went about laying the table for dinner she called to him. He came to her, his black face as forlorn as a lost and masterless hound.

 

"Pork," she said sternly, "you cry just once more and I'll--I'll cry, too. You've got to stop."

 

"Yas'm. Ah try but eve'y time Ah try Ah thinks of Mist' Gerald an'--"

 

"Well, don't think. I can stand everybody else's tears but not yours. There," she broke off gently, "don't you see? I can't stand yours because I know how you loved him. Blow your nose, Pork. I've got a present for you."

 

A little interest flickered in Pork's eyes as he blew his nose loudly but it was more politeness than interest.

 

"You remember that night you got shot robbing somebody's hen house?"

 

"Lawd Gawd, Miss Scarlett! Ah ain' never--"

 

"Well, you did, so don't lie to me about it at this late date. You remember I said I was going to give you a watch for being so faithful?"

 

"Yas'm, Ah 'members. Ah figgered you'd done fergot."

 

"No, I didn't forget and here it is."

 

She held out for him a massive gold watch, heavily embossed, from which dangled a chain with many fobs and seals.

 

"Fo' Gawd, Miss Scarlett!" cried Pork. "Dat's Mist' Gerald's watch! Ah done seen him look at dat watch a milyun times!"

 

"Yes, it's Pa's watch, Pork, and I'm giving it to you. Take it."

 

"Oh, no'm!" Pork retreated in horror. "Dat's a w'ite gempmum's watch an' Mist' Gerald's ter boot. Huccome you talk 'bout givin' it ter me, Miss Scarlett? Dat watch belong by rights ter lil Wade Hampton."

 

"It belongs to you. What did Wade Hampton ever do for Pa? Did he look after him when he was sick and feeble? Did he bathe him and dress him and shave him? Did he stick by him when the Yankees came? Did he steal for him? Don't be a fool, Pork. If ever anyone deserved a watch, you do, and I know Pa would approve. Here."

 

She picked up the black hand and laid the watch in the palm. Pork gazed at it reverently and slowly delight spread over his face.

 

"Fer me, truly, Miss Scarlett?"

 

"Yes, indeed."

 

"Well'm--thankee, Ma'm."

 

"Would you like for me to take it to Atlanta and have it engraved?"

 

"Whut's dis engrabed mean?" Pork's voice was suspicious.

 

"It means to put writing on the back of it, like--like 'To Pork from the O'Haras--Well done good and faithful servant.'"

 

"No'm--thankee. Ma'm. Never mind de engrabin'." Pork retreated a step, clutching the watch firmly.

 

A little smile twitched her lips.

 

"What's the matter, Pork? Don't you trust me to bring it back?"

 

"Yas'm, Ah trus'es you--only, well'm, you mout change yo' mind."

 

"I wouldn't do that."

 

"Well'm, you mout sell it. Ah spec it's wuth a heap."

 

"Do you think I'd sell Pa's watch?"

 

"Yas'm--ef you needed de money."

 

"You ought to be beat for that, Pork. I've a mind to take the watch back."

 

"No'm, you ain'!" The first faint smile of the day showed on Pork's grief-worn face. "Ah knows you--An' Miss Scarlett--"

 

"Yes, Pork?"

 

"Ef you wuz jes' half as nice ter w'ite folks as you is ter niggers, Ah spec de worl' would treat you better."

 

"It treats me well enough," she said. "Now, go find Mr. Ashley and tell him I want to see him here, right away."

 

Ashley sat on Ellen's little writing chair, his long body dwarfing the frail bit of furniture while Scarlett offered him a half- interest in the mill. Not once did his eyes meet hers and he spoke no word of interruption. He sat looking down at his hands, turning them over slowly, inspecting first palms and then backs, as though he had never seen them before. Despite hard work, they were still slender and sensitive looking and remarkably well tended for a farmer's hands.

 

His bowed head and silence disturbed her a little and she redoubled her efforts to make the mill sound attractive. She brought to bear, too, all the charm of smile and glance she possessed but they were wasted, for he did not raise his eyes. If he would only look at her! She made no mention of the information Will had given her of Ashley's determination to go North and spoke with the outward assumption that no obstacle stood in the way of his agreement with her plan. Still he did not speak and finally, her words trailed into silence. There was a determined squareness about his slender shoulders that alarmed her. Surely he wouldn't refuse! What earthly reason could he have for refusing?

 

"Ashley," she began again and paused. She had not intended using her pregnancy as an argument, had shrunk from the thought of Ashley even seeing her so bloated and ugly, but as her other persuasions seemed to have made no impression, she decided to use it and her helplessness as a last card.

 

"You must come to Atlanta. I do need your help so badly now, because I can't look after the mills. It may be months before I can because--you see--well, because . . ."

 

"Please!" he said roughly. "Good God, Scarlett!"

 

He rose and went abruptly to the window and stood with his back to her, watching the solemn single file of ducks parade across the barnyard.

 

"Is that--is that why you won't look at me?" she questioned forlornly. "I know I look--"

 

He swung around in a flash and his gray eyes met hers with an intensity that made her hands go to her throat.

 

"Damn your looks!" he said with a swift violence. "You know you always look beautiful to me."

 

Happiness flooded her until her eyes were liquid with tears.

 

"How sweet of you to say that! For I was so ashamed to let you see me--"

 

"You ashamed? Why should you be ashamed? I'm the one to feel shame and I do. If it hadn't been for my stupidity you wouldn't be in this fix. You'd never have married Frank. I should never have let you leave Tara last winter. Oh, fool that I was! I should have known you--known you were desperate, so desperate that you'd-- I should have--I should have--" His face went haggard.

 

Scarlett's heart beat wildly. He was regretting that he had not run away with her!

 

"The least I could have done was go out and commit highway robbery or murder to get the tax money for you when you had taken us in as beggars. Oh, I messed it up all the way around!"

 

Her heart contracted with disappointment and some of the happiness went from her, for these were not the words she hoped to hear.

 

"I would have gone anyway," she said tiredly. "I couldn't have let you do anything like that. And anyway, it's done now."

 

"Yes, it's done now," he said with slow bitterness. "You wouldn't have let me do anything dishonorable but you would sell yourself to a man you didn't love--and bear his child, so that my family and I wouldn't starve. It was kind of you to shelter my helplessness."

 

The edge in his voice spoke of a raw, unhealed wound that ached within him and his words brought shame to her eyes. He was swift to see it and his face changed to gentleness.

 

"You didn't think I was blaming you? Dear God, Scarlett! No. You are the bravest woman I've ever known. It's myself I'm blaming."

 

He turned and looked out of the window again and the shoulders presented to her gaze did not look quite so square. Scarlett waited a long moment in silence, hoping that Ashley would return to the mood in which he spoke of her beauty, hoping he would say more words that she could treasure. It had been so long since she had seen him and she had lived on memories until they were worn thin. She knew he still loved her. That fact was evident, in every line of him, in every bitter, self-condemnatory word, in his resentment at her bearing Frank's child. She so longed to hear him say it in words, longed to speak words herself that would provoke a confession, but she dared not. She remembered her promise given last winter in the orchard, that she would never again throw herself at his head. Sadly she knew that promise must be kept if Ashley were to remain near her. One cry from her of love and longing, one look that pleaded for his arms, and the matter would be settled forever. Ashley would surely go to New York. And he must not go away.

 

"Oh, Ashley, don't blame yourself! How could it be your fault? You will come to Atlanta and help me, won't you?"

 

"No."

 

"But, Ashley," her voice was beginning to break with anguish and disappointment, "But I'd counted on you. I do need you so. Frank can't help me. He's so busy with the store and if you don't come I don't know where I can get a man! Everybody in Atlanta who is smart is busy with his own affairs and the others are so incompetent and--"

 

"It's no use, Scarlett."

 

"You mean you'd rather go to New York and live among Yankees than come to Atlanta?"

 

"Who told you that?" He turned and faced her, faint annoyance wrinkling his forehead.

 

"Will."

 

"Yes, I've decided to go North. An old friend who made the Grand Tour with me before the war has offered me a position in his father's bank. It's better so, Scarlett. I'd be no good to you. I know nothing of the lumber business."

 

"But you know less about banking and it's much harder! And I know I'd make far more allowances for your inexperience than Yankees would!"

 

He winced and she knew she had said the wrong thing. He turned and looked out of the window again.

 

"I don't want allowances made for me. I want to stand on my own feet for what I'm worth. What have I done with my life, up till now? It's time I made something of myself--or went down through my own fault. I've been your pensioner too long already."

 

"But I'm offering you a half-interest in the mill, Ashley! You would be standing on your own feet because--you see, it would be your own business."

 

"It would amount to the same thing. I'd not be buying the half- interest. I'd be taking it as a gift. And I've taken too many gifts from you already, Scarlett--food and shelter and even clothes for myself and Melanie and the baby. And I've given you nothing in return."

 

"Oh, but you have! Will couldn't have--"

 

"I can split kindling very nicely now."

 

"Oh, Ashley!" she cried despairingly, tears in her eyes at the jeering note in his voice. "What has happened to you since I've been gone? You sound so hard and bitter! You didn't used to be this way."

 

"What's happened? A very remarkable thing, Scarlett. I've been thinking. I don't believe I really thought from the time of the surrender until you went away from here. I was in a state of suspended animation and it was enough that I had something to eat and a bed to lie on. But when you went to Atlanta, shouldering a man's burden, I saw myself as much less than a man--much less, indeed, than a woman. Such thoughts aren't pleasant to live with and I do not intend to live with them any longer. Other men came out of the war with less than I had, and look at them now. So I'm going to New York."

 

"But--I don't understand! If it's work you want, why won't Atlanta do as well as New York? And my mill--"

 

"No, Scarlett. This is my last chance. I'll go North. If I go to Atlanta and work for you, I'm lost forever."

 

The word "lost--lost--lost" dinged frighteningly in her heart like a death bell sounding. Her eyes went quickly to his but they were wide and crystal gray and they were looking through her and beyond her at some fate she could not see, could not understand.

 

"Lost? Do you mean--have you done something the Atlanta Yankees can get you for? I mean, about helping Tony get away or--or-- Oh, Ashley, you aren't in the Ku Klux, are you?"

 

His remote eyes came back to her swiftly and he smiled a brief smile that never reached his eyes.

 

"I had forgotten you were so literal. No, it's not the Yankees I'm afraid of. I mean if I go to Atlanta and take help from you again, I bury forever any hope of ever standing alone."

 

"Oh," she sighed in quick relief, "if it's only that!"

 

"Yes," and he smiled again, the smile more wintry than before. "Only that. Only my masculine pride, my self-respect and, if you choose to so call it, my immortal soul."

 

"But," she swung around on another tack, "you could gradually buy the mill from me and it would be your own and then--"

 

"Scarlett," he interrupted fiercely, "I tell you, no! There are other reasons."

 

"What reasons?"

 

"You know my reasons better than anyone in the world."

 

"Oh--that? But--that'll be all right," she assured swiftly. "I promised, you know, out in the orchard, last winter and I'll keep my promise and--"

 

"Then you are surer of yourself than I am. I could not count on myself to keep such a promise. I should not have said that but I had to make you understand. Scarlett, I will not talk of this any more. It's finished. When Will and Suellen marry, I am going to New York."

 

His eyes, wide and stormy, met hers for an instant and then he went swiftly across the room. His hand was on the door knob. Scarlett stared at him in agony. The interview was ended and she had lost. Suddenly weak from the strain and sorrow of the last day and the present disappointment, her nerves broke abruptly and she screamed: "Oh, Ashley!" And, flinging herself down on the sagging sofa, she burst into wild crying.

 

She heard his uncertain footsteps leaving the door and his helpless voice saying her name over and over above her head. There was a swift pattering of feet racing up the hall from the kitchen and Melanie burst into the room, her eyes wide with alarm.

 

"Scarlett . . . the baby isn't . . . ?"

 

Scarlett burrowed her head in the dusty upholstery and screamed again.

 

"Ashley--he's so mean! So doggoned mean--so hateful!"

 

"Oh, Ashley, what have you done to her?" Melanie threw herself on the floor beside the sofa and gathered Scarlett into her arms. "What have you said? How could you! You might bring on the baby! There, my darling, put your head on Melanie's shoulder! What is wrong?"

 

"Ashley--he's so--so bullheaded and hateful!"

 

"Ashley, I'm surprised at you! Upsetting her so much and in her condition and Mr. O'Hara hardly in his grave!"

 

"Don't you fuss at him!" cried Scarlett illogically, raising her head abruptly from Melanie's shoulder, her coarse black hair tumbling out from its net and her face streaked with tears. "He's got a right to do as he pleases!"

 

"Melanie," said Ashley, his face white, "let me explain. Scarlett was kind enough to offer me a position in Atlanta as manager of one of her mills--"

 

"Manager!" cried Scarlett indignantly. "I offered him a half- interest and he--"

 

"And I told her I had already made arrangements for us to go North and she--"

 

"Oh," cried Scarlett, beginning to sob again, "I told him and told him how much I needed him--how I couldn't get anybody to manage the mill--how I was going to have this baby--and he refused to come! And now--now, I'll have to sell the mill and I know I can't get anything like a good price for it and I'll lose money and I guess maybe we'll starve, but he won't care. He's so mean!"

 

She burrowed her head back into Melanie's thin shoulder and some of the real anguish went from her as a flicker of hope woke in her. She could sense that in Melanie's devoted heart she had an ally, feel Melanie's indignation that anyone, even her beloved husband, should make Scarlett cry. Melanie flew at Ashley like a small determined dove and pecked him for the first time in her life.

 

"Ashley, how could you refuse her? And after all she's done for us! How ungrateful you make us appear! And she so helpless now with the bab-- How unchivalrous of you! She helped us when we needed help and now you deny her when she needs you!"

 

Scarlett peeped slyly at Ashley and saw surprise and uncertainty plain in his face as he looked into Melanie's dark indignant eyes. Scarlett was surprised, too, at the vigor of Melanie's attack, for she knew Melanie considered her husband beyond wifely reproaches and thought his decisions second only to God's.

 

"Melanie . . ." he began and then threw out his hands helplessly.

 

"Ashley, how can you hesitate? Think what she's done for us--for me! I'd have died in Atlanta when Beau came if it hadn't been for her! And she--yes, she killed a Yankee, defending us. Did you know that? She killed a man for us. And she worked and slaved before you and Will came home, just to keep food in our mouths. And when I think of her plowing and picking cotton, I could just-- Oh, my darling!" And she swooped her head and kissed Scarlett's tumbled hair in fierce loyalty. "And now the first time she asks us to do something for her--"

 

"You don't need to tell me what she has done for us."

 

"And Ashley, just think! Besides helping her, just think what it'll mean for us to live in Atlanta among our own people and not have to live with Yankees! There'll be Auntie and Uncle Henry and all our friends, and Beau can have lots of playmates and go to school. If we went North, we couldn't let him go to school and associate with Yankee children and have pickaninnies in his class! We'd have to have a governess and I don't see how we'd afford--"

 

"Melanie," said Ashley and his voice was deadly quiet, "do you really want to go to Atlanta so badly? You never said so when we talked about going to New York. You never intimated--"

 

"Oh, but when we talked about going to New York, I thought there was nothing for you in Atlanta and, besides, it wasn't my place to say anything. It's a wife's duty to go where her husband goes. But now that Scarlett needs us so and has a position that only you can fill we can go home! Home!" Her voice was rapturous as she squeezed Scarlett. "And I'll see Five Points again and Peachtree road and--and-- Oh, how I've missed them all! And maybe we could have a little home of our own! I wouldn't care how little and tacky it was but--a home of our own!"

 

Her eyes blazed with enthusiasm and happiness and the two stared at her, Ashley with a queer stunned look, Scarlett with surprise mingled with shame. It had never occurred to her that Melanie missed Atlanta so much and longed to be back, longed for a home of her own. She had seemed so contented at Tara it came to Scarlett as a shock that she was homesick.

 

"Oh Scarlett, how good of you to plan all this for us! You knew how I longed for home!"

 

As usual when confronted by Melanie's habit of attributing worthy motives where no worth existed, Scarlett was ashamed and irritated, and suddenly she could not meet either Ashley's or Melanie's eyes.

 

"We could get a little house of our own. Do you realize that we've been married five years and never had a home?"

 

"You can stay with us at Aunt Pitty's. That's your home," mumbled Scarlett, toying with a pillow and keeping her eyes down to hide dawning triumph in them as she felt the tide turning her way.

 

"No, but thank you just the same, darling. That would crowd us so. We'll get a house-- Oh, Ashley, do say Yes!"

 

"Scarlett," said Ashley and his voice was toneless, "look at me."

 

Startled, she looked up and met gray eyes that were bitter and full of tired futility.

 

"Scarlett, I will come to Atlanta. . . . I cannot fight you both."

 

He turned and walked out of the room. Some of the triumph in her heart was dulled by a nagging fear. The look in his eyes when he spoke had been the same as when he said he would be lost forever if he came to Atlanta.

 

---

 

After Suellen and Will married and Carreen went off to Charleston to the convent, Ashley, Melanie and Beau came to Atlanta, bringing Dilcey with them to cook and nurse. Prissy and Pork were left at Tara until such a time as Will could get other darkies to help him in the fields and then they, too, would come to town.

 

The little brick house that Ashley took for his family was on Ivy Street directly behind Aunt Pitty's house and the two back yards ran together, divided only by a ragged overgrown privet hedge. Melanie had chosen it especially for this reason. She said, on the first morning of her return to Atlanta as she laughed and cried and embraced Scarlett and Aunt Pitty, she had been separated from her loved ones for so long that she could never be close enough to them again.

 

The house had originally been two stories high but the upper floor had been destroyed by shells during the siege and the owner, returning after the surrender, had lacked the money to replace it. He had contented himself with putting a flat roof on the remaining first floor which gave the building the squat, disproportionate look of a child's playhouse built of shoe boxes. The house was high from the ground, built over a large cellar, and the long sweeping flight of stairs which reached it made it look slightly ridiculous. But the flat, squashed look of the place was partly redeemed by the two fine old oaks which shaded it and a dusty- leaved magnolia, splotched with white blossoms, standing beside the front steps. The lawn was wide and green with thick clover and bordering it was a straggling, unkempt privet hedge, interlaced with sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines. Here and there in the grass, roses threw out sprangles from crushed old stems and pink and white crepe myrtle bloomed as valiantly as if war had not passed over their heads and Yankee horses gnawed their boughs.

 

Scarlett thought it quite the ugliest dwelling she had ever seen but, to Melanie, Twelve Oaks in all its grandeur had not been more beautiful. It was home and she and Ashley and Beau were at last together under their own roof.

 

India Wilkes came back from Macon, where she and Honey had lived since 1864, and took up her residence with her brother, crowding the occupants of the little house. But Ashley and Melanie welcomed her. Times had changed, money was scarce, but nothing had altered the rule of Southern life that families always made room gladly for indigent or unmarried female relatives.

 

Honey had married and, so India said, married beneath her, a coarse Westerner from Mississippi who had settled in Macon. He had a red face and a loud voice and jolly ways. India had not approved of the match and, not approving, had not been happy in her brother-in- law's home. She welcomed the news that Ashley now had a home of his own, so she could remove herself from uncongenial surroundings and also from the distressing sight of her sister so fatuously happy with a man unworthy of her.

 

The rest of the family privately thought that the giggling and simple-minded Honey had done far better than could be expected and they marveled that she had caught any man. Her husband was a gentleman and a man of some means; but to India, born in Georgia and reared in Virginia traditions, anyone not from the eastern seaboard was a boor and a barbarian. Probably Honey's husband was as happy to be relieved of her company as she was to leave him, for India was not easy to live with these days.

 

The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely on her shoulders now. She was twenty-five and looked it, and so there was no longer any need for her to try to be attractive. Her pale lashless eyes looked directly and uncompromisingly upon the world and her thin lips were ever set in haughty tightness. There was an air of dignity and pride about her now that, oddly enough, became her better than the determined girlish sweetness of her days at Twelve Oaks. The position she held was almost that of a widow. Everyone knew that Stuart Tarleton would have married her had he not been killed at Gettysburg, and so she was accorded the respect due a woman who had been wanted if not wed.

 

The six rooms of the little house on Ivy Street were soon scantily furnished with the cheapest pine and oak furniture in Frank's store for, as Ashley was penniless and forced to buy on credit, he refused anything except the least expensive and bought only the barest necessities. This embarrassed Frank who was fond of Ashley and it distressed Scarlett. Both she and Frank would willingly have given, without any charge, the finest mahogany and carved rosewood in the store, but the Wilkeses obstinately refused. Their house was painfully ugly and bare and Scarlett hated to see Ashley living in the uncarpeted, uncurtained rooms. But he did not seem to notice his surroundings and Melanie, having her own home for the first time since her marriage, was so happy she was actually proud of the place. Scarlett would have suffered agonies of humiliation at having friends find her without draperies and carpets and cushions and the proper number of chairs and teacups and spoons. But Melanie did the honors of her house as though plush curtains and brocade sofas were hers.

 

 

  

 To be continued

 

Return to Good in Parts Contents page

 

 

39

 

 

 

GONE WITH THE WIND

 

 

This story is set during the American Civil War, and therefore contains characters and their language of the period, and other outdated cultural depictions. If you feel you are likely to be offended by these, do not read any further.

 

PART 39

 

 

CHAPTER XL

 

Scarlett slept little that night. When the dawn had come and the sun was creeping over the black pines on the hills to the east, she rose from her tumbled bed and, seating herself on a stool by the window, laid her tired head on her arm and looked out over the barn yard and orchard of Tara toward the cotton fields. Everything was fresh and dewy and silent and green and the sight of the cotton fields brought a measure of balm and comfort to her sore heart. Tara, at sunrise, looked loved, well tended and at peace, for all that its master lay dead. The squatty log chicken house was clay daubed against rats, weasels and clean with whitewash, and so was the log stable. The garden with its rows of corn, bright-yellow squash, butter beans and turnips was well weeded and neatly fenced with split-oak rails. The orchard was cleared of underbrush and only daisies grew beneath the long rows of trees. The sun picked out with faint glistening the apples and the furred pink peaches half hidden in the green leaves. Beyond lay the curving rows of cotton, still and green under the gold of the new sky. The ducks and chickens were waddling and strutting off toward the fields, for under the bushes in the soft plowed earth were found the choicest worms and slugs.

 

Scarlett's heart swelled with affection and gratitude to Will who had done all of this. Even her loyalty to Ashley could not make her believe he had been responsible for much of this well-being, for Tara's bloom was not the work of a planter-aristocrat, but of the plodding, tireless "small farmer" who loved his land. It was a "two-horse" farm, not the lordly plantation of other days with pastures full of mules and fine horses and cotton and corn stretching as far as eye could see. But what there was of it was good and the acres that were lying fallow could be reclaimed when times grew better, and they would be the more fertile for their rest.

 

Will had done more than merely farm a few acres. He had kept sternly at bay those two enemies of Georgia planters, the seedling pine and the blackberry brambles. They had not stealthily taken garden and pasture and cotton field and lawn and reared themselves insolently by the porches of Tara, as they were doing on numberless plantations throughout the state.

 

Scarlett's heart failed a beat when she thought how close Tara had come to going back to wilderness. Between herself and Will, they had done a good job. They had held off the Yankees, the Carpetbaggers and the encroachments of Nature. And, best of all, Will had told her that after the cotton came in in the fall, she need send no more money--unless some other Carpetbagger coveted Tara and skyrocketed the taxes. Scarlett knew Will would have a hard pull without her help but she admired and respected his independence. As long as he was in the position of hired help he would take her money, but now that he was to become her brother-in- law and the man of the house, he intended to stand on his own efforts. Yes, Will was something the Lord had provided.

 

---

 

Pork had dug the grave the night before, close by Ellen's grave, and he stood, spade in hand, behind the moist red clay he was soon to shovel back in place. Scarlett stood behind him in the patchy shade of a gnarled low-limbed cedar, the hot sun of the June morning dappling her, and tried to keep her eyes away from the red trench in front of her. Jim Tarleton, little Hugh Munroe, Alex Fontaine and old man McRae's youngest grandson came slowly and awkwardly down the path from the house bearing Gerald's coffin on two lengths of split oak. Behind them, at a respectful distance, followed a large straggling crowd of neighbors and friends, shabbily dressed, silent. As they came down the sunny path through the garden, Pork bowed his head upon the top of the spade handle and cried; and Scarlett saw with incurious surprise that the kinks on his head, so jettily black when she went to Atlanta a few months before, were now grizzled.

 

She thanked God tiredly that she had cried all her tears the night before, so now she could stand erect and dry eyed. The sound of Suellen's tears, just back of her shoulder, irritated her unbearably and she had to clench her fists to keep from turning and slapping the swollen face. Sue had been the cause of her father's death, whether she intended it or not, and she should have the decency to control herself in front of the hostile neighbors. Not a single person had spoken to her that morning or given her one look of sympathy. They had kissed Scarlett quietly, shaken her hand, murmured kind words to Carreen and even to Pork but had looked through Suellen as if she were not there.

 

To them she had done worse than murder her father. She had tried to betray him into disloyalty to the South. And to that grim and close-knit community it was as if she had tried to betray the honor of them all. She had broken the solid front the County presented to the world. By her attempt to get money from the Yankee government she had aligned herself with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags, more hated enemies than the Yankee soldiers had ever been. She, a member of an old and staunchly Confederate family, a planter's family, had gone over to the enemy and by so doing had brought shame on every family in the County.

 

The mourners were seething with indignation and downcast with sorrow, especially three of them--old man McRae, who had been Gerald's crony since he came to the up-country from Savannah so many years before, Grandma Fontaine who loved him because he was Ellen's husband, and Mrs. Tarleton who had been closer to him than to any of her neighbors because, as she often said, he was the only man in the County who knew a stallion from a gelding.

 

The sight of the stormy faces of these three in the dim parlor where Gerald lay before the funeral had caused Ashley and Will some uneasiness and they had retired to Ellen's office for a consultation.

 

"Some of them are goin' to say somethin' about Suellen," said Will abruptly, biting his straw in half. "They think they got just cause to say somethin'. Maybe they have. It ain't for me to say. But, Ashley, whether they're right or not, we'll have to resent it, bein' the men of the family, and then there'll be trouble. Can't nobody do nothin' with old man McRae because he's deaf as a post and can't hear folks tryin' to shut him up. And you know there ain't nobody in God's world ever stopped Grandma Fontaine from speakin' her mind. And as for Mrs. Tarleton--did you see her roll them russet eyes of hers every time she looked at Sue? She's got her ears laid back and can't hardly wait. If they say somethin', we got to take it up and we got enough trouble at Tara now without bein' at outs with our neighbors."

 

Ashley sighed worriedly. He knew the tempers of his neighbors better than Will did and he remembered that fully half of the quarrels and some of the shootings of the days before the war had risen from the County custom of saying a few words over the coffins of departed neighbors. Generally the words were eulogistic in the extreme but occasionally they were not. Sometimes, words meant in the utmost respect were misconstrued by overstrung relatives of the dead and scarcely were the last shovels of earth mounded above the coffin before trouble began.

 

In the absence of a priest Ashley was to conduct the services with the aid of Carreen's Book of Devotions, the assistance of the Methodist and Baptist preachers of Jonesboro and Fayetteville having been tactfully refused. Carreen, more devoutly Catholic than her sisters, had been very upset that Scarlett had neglected to bring a priest from Atlanta with her and had only been a little eased by the reminder that when the priest came down to marry Will and Suellen, he could read the services over Gerald. It was she who objected to the neighboring Protestant preachers and gave the matter into Ashley's hands, marking passages in her book for him to read. Ashley, leaning against the old secretary, knew that the responsibility for preventing trouble lay with him and, knowing the hair-trigger tempers of the County, was at a loss as to how to proceed.

 

"There's no help for it, Will," he said, rumpling his bright hair. "I can't knock Grandma Fontaine down or old man McRae either, and I can't hold my hand over Mrs. Tarleton's mouth. And the mildest thing they'll say is that Suellen is a murderess and a traitor and but for her Mr. O'Hara would still be alive. Damn this custom of speaking over the dead. It's barbarous."

 

"Look, Ash," said Will slowly. "I ain't aimin' to have nobody say nothin' against Suellen, no matter what they think. You leave it to me. When you've finished with the readin' and the prayin' and you say: 'If anyone would like to say a few words,' you look right at me, so I can speak first."

 

But Scarlett, watching the pallbearers' difficulty in getting the coffin through the narrow entrance into the burying ground, had no thought of trouble to come after the funeral. She was thinking with a leaden heart that in burying Gerald she was burying one of the last links that joined her to the old days of happiness and irresponsibility.

 

Finally the pallbearers set the coffin down near the grave and stood clenching and unclenching their aching fingers. Ashley, Melanie and Will filed into the inclosure and stood behind the O'Hara girls. All the closer neighbors who could crowd in were behind them and the others stood outside the brick wall. Scarlett, really seeing them for the first time, was surprised and touched by the size of the crowd. With transportation so limited it was kind of so many to come. There were fifty or sixty people there, some of them from so far away she wondered how they had heard in time to come. There were whole families from Jonesboro and Fayetteville and Lovejoy and with them a few negro servants. Many small farmers from far across the river were present and Crackers from the backwoods and a scattering of swamp folk. The swamp men were lean bearded giants in homespun, coon-skin caps on their heads, their rifles easy in the crooks of their arms, their wads of tobacco stilled in their cheeks. Their women were with them, their bare feet sunk in the soft red earth, their lower lips full of snuff. Their faces beneath their sun-bonnets were sallow and malarial- looking but shining clean and their freshly ironed calicoes glistened with starch.

 

The near neighbors were there in full force. Grandma Fontaine, withered, wrinkled and yellow as an old molted bird, was leaning on her cane, and behind her were Sally Munroe Fontaine and Young Miss Fontaine. They were trying vainly by whispered pleas and jerks at her skirt to make the old lady sit down on the brick wall. Grandma's husband, the Old Doctor, was not there. He had died two months before and much of the bright malicious joy of life had gone from her old eyes. Cathleen Calvert Hilton stood alone as befitted one whose husband had helped bring about the present tragedy, her faded sunbonnet hiding her bowed face. Scarlett saw with amazement that her percale dress had grease spots on it and her hands were freckled and unclean. There were even black crescents under her fingernails. There was nothing of quality folks about Cathleen now. She looked Cracker, even worse. She looked poor white, shiftless, slovenly, trifling.

 

"She'll be dipping snuff soon, if she isn't doing it already," thought Scarlett in horror. "Good Lord! What a comedown!"

 

She shuddered, turning her eyes from Cathleen as she realized how narrow was the chasm between quality folk and poor whites.

 

"There but for a lot of gumption am I," she thought, and pride surged through her as she realized that she and Cathleen had started with the same equipment after the surrender--empty hands and what they had in their heads.

 

"I haven't done so bad," she thought, lifting her chin and smiling.

 

But she stopped in mid-smile as she saw the scandalized eyes of Mrs. Tarleton upon her. Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears and, after giving Scarlett a reproving look, she turned her gaze back to Suellen, a fierce angry gaze that boded ill for her. Behind her and her husband were the four Tarleton girls, their red locks indecorous notes in the solemn occasion, their russet eyes still looking like the eyes of vital young animals, spirited and dangerous.

 

Feet were stilled, hats were removed, hands folded and skirts rustled into quietness as Ashley stepped forward with Carreen's worn Book of Devotions in his hand. He stood for a moment looking down, the sun glittering on his golden head. A deep silence fell on the crowd, so deep that the harsh whisper of the wind in the magnolia leaves came clear to their ears and the far-off repetitious note of a mockingbird sounded unendurably loud and sad. Ashley began to read the prayers and all heads bowed as his resonant, beautifully modulated voice rolled out the brief and dignified words.

 

"Oh!" thought Scarlett, her throat constricting. "How beautiful his voice is! If anyone has to do this for Pa, I'm glad it's Ashley. I'd rather have him than a priest. I'd rather have Pa buried by one of his own folks than a stranger."

 

When Ashley came to the part of the prayers concerning the souls in Purgatory, which Carreen had marked for him to read, he abruptly closed the book. Only Carreen noticed the omission and looked up puzzled, as he began the Lord's Prayer. Ashley knew that half the people present had never heard of Purgatory and those who had would take it as a personal affront, if he insinuated, even in prayer, that so fine a man as Mr. O'Hara had not gone straight to Heaven. So, in deference to public opinion, he skipped all mention of Purgatory. The gathering joined heartily in the Lord's Prayer but their voices trailed off into embarrassed silence when he began the Hail Mary. They had never heard that prayer and they looked furtively at each other as the O'Hara girls, Melanie and the Tara servants gave the response: "Pray for us, now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

 

Then Ashley raised his head and stood for a moment, uncertain. The eyes of the neighbors were expectantly upon him as they settled themselves in easier positions for a long harangue. They were waiting for him to go on with the service, for it did not occur to any of them that he was at the end of the Catholic prayers. County funerals were always long. The Baptist and Methodist ministers who performed them had no set prayers but extemporized as the circumstances demanded and seldom stopped before all mourners were in tears and the bereaved feminine relatives screaming with grief. The neighbors would have been shocked, aggrieved and indignant, had these brief prayers been all the service over the body of their loved friend, and no one knew this better than Ashley. The matter would be discussed at dinner tables for weeks and the opinion of the County would be that the O'Hara girls had not shown proper respect for their father.

 

So he threw a quick apologetic glance at Carreen and, bowing his head again, began reciting from memory the Episcopal burial service which he had often read over slaves buried at Twelve Oaks.

 

"I am the Resurrection and the Life . . . and whosoever . . . believeth in Me shall never die."

 

It did not come back to him readily and he spoke slowly, occasionally falling silent for a space as he waited for phrases to rise from his memory. But this measured delivery made his words more impressive, and mourners who had been dry-eyed before began now to reach for handkerchiefs. Sturdy Baptists and Methodists all, they thought it the Catholic ceremony and immediately rearranged their first opinion that the Catholic services were cold and Popish. Scarlett and Suellen were equally ignorant and thought the words comforting and beautiful. Only Melanie and Carreen realized that a devoutly Catholic Irishman was being laid to rest by the Church of England's service. And Carreen was too stunned by grief and her hurt at Ashley's treachery to interfere.

 

When he had finished, Ashley opened wide his sad gray eyes and looked about the crowd. After a pause, his eyes caught those of Will and he said: "Is there anyone present who would like to say a word?"

 

Mrs. Tarleton twitched nervously but before she could act, Will stumped forward and standing at the head of the coffin began to speak.

 

"Friends," he began in his flat voice, "maybe you think I'm gettin' above myself, speakin' first--me who never knew Mr. O'Hara till 'bout a year ago when you all have known him twenty years or more. But this here is my excuse. If he'd lived a month or so longer, I'd have had the right to call him Pa."

 

A startled ripple went over the crowd. They were too well bred to whisper but they shifted on their feet and stared at Carreen's bowed head. Everyone knew his dumb devotion to her. Seeing the direction in which all eyes were cast, Will went on as if he had taken no note.

 

"So bein' as how I'm to marry Miss Suellen as soon as the priest comes down from Atlanta, I thought maybe that gives me the right to speak first."

 

The last part of his speech was lost in a faint sibilant buzz that went through the gathering, an angry beelike buzz. There were indignation and disappointment in the sound. Everyone liked Will, everyone respected him for what he had done for Tara. Everyone knew his affections lay with Carreen, so the news that he was to marry the neighborhood pariah instead sat ill upon them. Good old Will marrying that nasty, sneaking little Suellen O'Hara!

 

For a moment the air was tense. Mrs. Tarleton's eyes began to snap and her lips to shape soundless words. In the silence, old man McRae's high voice could be heard imploring his grandson to tell him what had been said. Will faced them all, still mild of face, but there was something in his pale blue eyes which dared them to say one word about his future wife. For a moment the balance hung between the honest affection everyone had for Will and their contempt for Suellen. And Will won. He continued as if his pause had been a natural one.

 

"I never knew Mr. O'Hara in his prime like you all done. All I knew personally was a fine old gentleman who was a mite addled. But I've heard tell from you all 'bout what he used to be like. And I want to say this. He was a fightin' Irishman and a Southern gentleman and as loyal a Confederate as ever lived. You can't get no better combination than that. And we ain't likely to see many more like him, because the times that bred men like him are as dead as he is. He was born in a furrin country but the man we're buryin' here today was more of a Georgian than any of us mournin' him. He lived our life, he loved our land and, when you come right down to it, he died for our Cause, same as the soldiers did. He was one of us and he had our good points and our bad points and he had our strength and he had our failin's. He had our good points in that couldn't nothin' stop him when his mind was made up and he warn't scared of nothin' that walked in shoe leather. There warn't nothin' that come to him FROM THE OUTSIDE that could lick him.

 

"He warn't scared of the English government when they wanted to hang him. He just lit out and left home. And when he come to this country and was pore, that didn't scare him a mite neither. He went to work and he made his money. And he warn't scared to tackle this section when it was part wild and the Injuns had just been run out of it. He made a big plantation out of a wilderness. And when the war come on and his money begun to go, he warn't scared to be pore again. And when the Yankees come through Tara and might of burnt him out or killed him, he warn't fazed a bit and he warn't licked neither. He just planted his front feet and stood his ground. That's why I say he had our good points. There ain't nothin' FROM THE OUTSIDE can lick any of us.

 

"But he had our failin's too, 'cause he could be licked from the inside. I mean to say that what the whole world couldn't do, his own heart could. When Mrs. O'Hara died, his heart died too and he was licked. And what we seen walking 'round here warn't him."

 

Will paused and his eyes went quietly around the circle of faces. The crowd stood in the hot sun as if enchanted to the ground and whatever wrath they had felt for Suellen was forgotten. Will's eyes rested for a moment on Scarlett and they crinkled slightly at the corners as if he were inwardly smiling comfort to her. Scarlett, who had been fighting back rising tears, did feel comforted. Will was talking common sense instead of a lot of tootle about reunions in another and better world and submitting her will to God's. And Scarlett had always found strength and comfort in common sense.

 

"And I don't want none of you to think the less of him for breakin' like he done. All you all and me, too, are like him. We got the same weakness and failin'. There ain't nothin' that walks can lick us, any more than it could lick him, not Yankees nor Carpetbaggers nor hard times nor high taxes nor even downright starvation. But that weakness that's in our hearts can lick us in the time it takes to bat your eye. It ain't always losin' someone you love that does it, like it done Mr. O'Hara. Everybody's mainspring is different. And I want to say this--folks whose main-springs are busted are better dead. There ain't no place for them in the world these days, and they're happier bein' dead. . . . That's why I'm sayin' you all ain't got no cause to grieve for Mr. O'Hara now. The time to grieve was back when Sherman come through and he lost Mrs. O'Hara. Now that his body's gone to join his heart, I don't see that we got reason to mourn, unless we're pretty damned selfish, and I'm sayin' it who loved him like he was my own pa. . . . There won't be no more words said, if you folks don't mind. The family is too cut up to listen and it wouldn't be no kindness to them."

 

Will stopped and, turning to Mrs. Tarleton, he said in a lower voice: "I wonder couldn't you take Scarlett in the house, Ma'm? It ain't right for her to be standin' in the sun so long. And Grandma Fontaine don't look any too peart neither, meanin' no disrespect."

 

Startled at the abrupt switching from the eulogy to herself, Scarlett went red with embarrassment as all eyes turned toward her. Why should Will advertise her already obvious pregnancy? She gave him a shamed indignant look, but Will's placid gaze bore her down.

 

"Please," his look said. "I know what I'm doin'."

 

Already he was the man of the house and, not wishing to make a scene, Scarlett turned helplessly to Mrs. Tarleton. That lady, suddenly diverted, as Will had intended, from thoughts of Suellen to the always fascinating matter of breeding, be it animal or human, took Scarlett's arm.

 

"Come in the house, honey."

 

Her face took on a look of kind, absorbed interest and Scarlett suffered herself to be led through the crowd that gave way and made a narrow path for her. There was a sympathetic murmuring as she passed and several hands went out to pat her comfortingly. When she came abreast Grandma Fontaine, the old lady put out a skinny claw and said: "Give me your arm, child," and added with a fierce glance at Sally and Young Miss: "No, don't you come. I don't want you."

 

They passed slowly through the crowd which closed behind them and went up the shady path toward the house, Mrs. Tarleton's eager helping hand so strong under Scarlett's elbow that she was almost lifted from the ground at each step.

 

"Now, why did Will do that?" cried Scarlett heatedly, when they were out of earshot. "He practically said: 'Look at her! She's going to have a baby!'"

 

"Well, sake's alive, you are, aren't you?" said Mrs. Tarleton. "Will did right. It was foolish of you to stand in the hot sun when you might have fainted and had a miscarriage."

 

"Will wasn't bothered about her miscarrying," said Grandma, a little breathless as she labored across the front yard toward the steps. There was a grim, knowing smile on her face. "Will's smart. He didn't want either you or me, Beetrice, at the graveside. He was scared of what we'd say and he knew this was the only way to get rid of us. . . . And it was more than that. He didn't want Scarlett to hear the clods dropping on the coffin. And he's right. Just remember, Scarlett, as long as you don't hear that sound, folks aren't actually dead to you. But once you hear it . . . Well, it's the most dreadfully final sound in the world. . . . Help me up the steps, child, and give me a hand, Beetrice. Scarlett don't any more need your arm than she needs crutches and I'm not so peart, as Will observed. . . . Will knew you were your father's pet and he didn't want to make it worse for you than it already was. He figured it wouldn't be so bad for your sisters. Suellen has her shame to sustain her and Carreen her God. But you've got nothing to sustain you, have you, child?"

 

"No," answered Scarlett, helping the old lady up the steps, faintly surprised at the truth that sounded in the reedy old voice. "I've never had anything to sustain me--except Mother."

 

"But when you lost her, you found you could stand alone, didn't you? Well, some folks can't. Your pa was one. Will's right. Don't you grieve. He couldn't get along without Ellen and he's happier where he is. Just like I'll be happier when I join the Old Doctor."

 

She spoke without any desire for sympathy and the two gave her none. She spoke as briskly and naturally as if her husband were alive and in Jonesboro and a short buggy ride would bring them together. Grandma was too old and had seen too much to fear death.

 

"But--you can stand alone too," said Scarlett.

 

"Yes, but it's powerful uncomfortable at times."

 

"Look here, Grandma," interrupted Mrs. Tarleton, "you ought not to talk to Scarlett like that. She's upset enough already. What with her trip down here and that tight dress and her grief and the heat, she's got enough to make her miscarry without your adding to it, talking grief and sorrow."

 

"God's nightgown!" cried Scarlett in irritation. "I'm not upset! And I'm not one of those sickly miscarrying fools!"

 

"You never can tell," said Mrs. Tarleton omnisciently. "I lost my first when I saw a bull gore one of our darkies and--you remember my red mare, Nellie? Now, there was the healthiest-looking mare you ever saw but she was nervous and high strung and if I didn't watch her, she'd--"

 

"Beetrice, hush," said Grandma. "Scarlett wouldn't miscarry on a bet. Let's us sit here in the hall where it's cool. There's a nice draft through here. Now, you go fetch us a glass of buttermilk, Beetrice, if there's any in the kitchen. Or look in the pantry and see if there's any wine. I could do with a glass. We'll sit here till the folks come up to say goodby."

 

"Scarlett ought to be in bed," insisted Mrs. Tarleton, running her eyes over her with the expert air of one who calculated a pregnancy to the last minute of its length.

 

"Get going," said Grandma, giving her a prod with her cane, and Mrs. Tarleton went toward the kitchen, throwing her hat carelessly on the sideboard and running her hands through her damp red hair.

 

Scarlett lay back in her chair and unbuttoned the two top buttons of her tight basque. It was cool and dim in the high-ceilinged hall and the vagrant draft that went from back to front of the house was refreshing after the heat of the sun. She looked across the hall into the parlor where Gerald had lain and, wrenching her thoughts from him, looked up at the portrait of Grandma Robillard hanging above the fireplace. The bayonet-scarred portrait with its high-piled hair, hall-exposed breasts and cool insolence had, as always, a tonic effect upon her.

 

"I don't know which hit Beetrice Tarleton worse, losing her boys or her horses," said Grandma Fontaine. "She never did pay much mind to Jim or her girls, you know. She's one of those folks Will was talking about. Her mainspring's busted. Sometimes I wonder if she won't go the way your pa went. She wasn't ever happy unless horses or humans were breeding right in her face and none of her girls are married or got any prospects of catching husbands in this county, so she's got nothing to occupy her mind. If she wasn't such lady at heart, she'd be downright common. . . . Was Will telling the truth about marrying Suellen?"

 

"Yes," said Scarlett, looking the old lady full in the eye. Goodness, she could remember the time when she was scared to death of Grandma Fontaine! Well, she'd grown up since then and she'd just as soon as not tell her to go to the devil if she meddled in affairs at Tara.

 

"He could do better," said Grandma candidly.

 

"Indeed?" said Scarlett haughtily.

 

"Come off your high horse, Miss," said the old lady tartly. "I shan't attack your precious sister, though I might have if I'd stayed at the burying ground. What I mean is with the scarcity of men in the neighborhood, Will could marry most any of the girls. There's Beetrice's four wild cats and the Munroe girls and the McRae--"

 

"He's going to marry Sue and that's that."

 

"She's lucky to get him."

 

"Tara is lucky to get him."

 

"You love this place, don't you?"

 

"Yes."

 

"So much that you don't mind your sister marrying out of her class as long as you have a man around to care for Tara?"

 

"Class?" said Scarlett, startled at the idea. "Class? What does class matter now, so long as a girl gets a husband who can take care of her?"

 

"That's a debatable question," said Old Miss. "Some folks would say you were talking common sense. Others would say you were letting down bars that ought never be lowered one inch. Will's certainly not quality folks and some of your people were."

 

Her sharp old eyes went to the portrait of Grandma Robillard.

 

Scarlett thought of Will, lank, unimpressive, mild, eternally chewing a straw, his whole appearance deceptively devoid of energy, like that of most Crackers. He did not have behind him a long line of ancestors of wealth, prominence and blood. The first of Will's family to set foot on Georgia soil might even have been one of Oglethorpe's debtors or a bond servant. Will had not been to college. In fact, four years in a backwoods school was all the education he had ever had. He was honest and he was loyal, he was patient and he was hard working, but certainly he was not quality. Undoubtedly by Robillard standards, Suellen was coming down in the world.

 

"So you approve of Will coming into your family?"

 

"Yes," answered Scarlett fiercely, ready to pounce upon the old lady at the first words of condemnation.

 

"You may kiss me," said Grandma surprisingly, and she smiled in her most approving manner. "I never liked you much till now, Scarlett. You were always hard as a hickory nut, even as a child, and I don't like hard females, barring myself. But I do like the way you meet things. You don't make a fuss about things that can't be helped, even if they are disagreeable. You take your fences cleanly like a good hunter."

 

Scarlett smiled uncertainly and pecked obediently at the withered cheek presented to her. It was pleasant to hear approving words again, even if she had little idea what they meant.

 

"There's plenty of folks hereabouts who'll have something to say about you letting Sue marry a Cracker--for all that everybody likes Will. They'll say in one breath what a fine man he is and how terrible it is for an O'Hara girl to marry beneath her. But don't you let it bother you."

 

"I've never bothered about what people said."

 

"So I've heard." There was a hint of acid in the old voice. "Well, don't bother about what folks say. It'll probably be a very successful marriage. Of course, Will's always going to look like a Cracker and marriage won't improve his grammar any. And, even if he makes a mint of money, he'll never lend any shine and sparkle to Tara, like your father did. Crackers are short on sparkle. But Will's a gentleman at heart. He's got the right instincts. Nobody but a born gentleman could have put his finger on what is wrong with us as accurately as he just did, down there at the burying. The whole world can't lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven't got any more--and by remembering too much. Yes, Will will do well by Suellen and by Tara."

 

"Then you approve of me letting him marry her?"

 

"God, no!" The old voice was tired and bitter but vigorous. "Approve of Crackers marrying into old families? Bah! Would I approve of breeding scrub stock to thoroughbreds? Oh, Crackers are good and solid and honest but--"

 

"But you said you thought it would be a successful match!" cried Scarlett bewildered.

 

"Oh, I think it's good for Suellen to marry Will--to marry anybody for that matter, because she needs a husband bad. And where else could she get one? And where else could you get as good a manager for Tara? But that doesn't mean I like the situation any better than you do."

 

But I do like it, thought Scarlett trying to grasp the old lady's meaning. I'm glad Will is going to marry her. Why should she think I minded? She's taking it for granted that I do mind, just like her.

 

She felt puzzled and a little ashamed, as always when people attributed to her emotions and motives they possessed and thought she shared.

 

Grandma fanned herself with her palmetto leaf and went on briskly: "I don't approve of the match any more than you do but I'm practical and so are you. And when it comes to something that's unpleasant but can't be helped, I don't see any sense in screaming and kicking about it. That's no way to meet the ups and downs of life. I know because my family and the Old Doctor's family have had more than our share of ups and downs. And if we folks have a motto, it's this: 'Don't holler--smile and bide your time.' We've survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we've gotten to be experts at surviving. We had to be. We've always bet on the wrong horses. Run out of France with the Huguenots, run out of England with the Cavaliers, run out of Scotland with Bonnie Prince Charlie, run out of Haiti by the niggers and now licked by the Yankees. But we always turn up on top in a few years. You know why?"

 

She cocked her head and Scarlett thought she looked like nothing so much as an old, knowing parrot.

 

"No, I don't know, I'm sure," she answered politely. But she was heartily bored, even as she had been the day when Grandma launched on her memories of the Creek uprising.

 

"Well, this is the reason. We bow to the inevitable. We're not wheat, we're buckwheat! When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it's dry and can't bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat's got sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren't a stiff-necked tribe. We're mighty limber when a hard wind's blowing, because we know it pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work and we smile and we bide our time. And we play along with lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we're strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we've climbed over. That, my child, is the secret of the survival." And after a pause, she added: "I pass it on to you."

 

The old lady cackled, as if she were amused by her words, despite the venom in them. She looked as if she expected some comment from Scarlett but the words had made little sense to her and she could think of nothing to say.

 

"No, sir," Old Miss went on, "our folks get flattened out but they rise up again, and that's more than I can say for plenty of people not so far away from here. Look at Cathleen Calvert. You can see what she's come to. Poor white! And a heap lower than the man she married. Look at the McRae family. Flat to the ground, helpless, don't know what to do, don't know how to do anything. Won't even try. They spend their time whining about the good old days. And look at--well, look at nearly anybody in this County except my Alex and my Sally and you and Jim Tarleton and his girls and some others. The rest have gone under because they didn't have any sap in them, because they didn't have the gumption to rise up again. There never was anything to those folks but money and darkies, and now that the money and darkies are gone, those folks will be Cracker in another generation."

 

"You forgot the Wilkes."

 

"No, I didn't forget them. I just thought I'd be polite and not mention them, seeing that Ashley's a guest under this roof. But seeing as how you've brought up their names--look at them! There's India who from all I hear is a dried-up old maid already, giving herself all kinds of widowed airs because Stu Tarleton was killed and not making any effort to forget him and try to catch another man. Of course, she's old but she could catch some widower with a big family if she tried. And poor Honey was always a man-crazy fool with no more sense than a guinea hen. And as for Ashley, look at him!"

 

"Ashley is a very fine man," began Scarlett hotly.

 

"I never said he wasn't but he's as helpless as a turtle on his back. If the Wilkes family pulls through these hard times, it'll be Melly who pulls them through. Not Ashley."

 

"Melly! Lord, Grandma! What are you talking about? I've lived with Melly long enough to know she's sickly and scared and hasn't the gumption to say Boo to a goose."

 

"Now why on earth should anyone want to say Boo to a goose? It always sounded like a waste of time to me. She might not say Boo to a goose but she'd say Boo to the world or the Yankee government or anything else that threatened her precious Ashley or her boy or her notions of gentility. Her way isn't your way, Scarlett, or my way. It's the way your mother would have acted if she'd lived. Melly puts me in mind of your mother when she was young. . . . And maybe she'll pull the Wilkes family through."

 

"Oh, Melly's a well-meaning little ninny. But you are very unjust to Ashley. He's--"

 

"Oh, foot! Ashley was bred to read books and nothing else. That doesn't help a man pull himself out of a tough fix, like we're all in now. From what I hear, he's the worst plow hand in the County! Now you just compare him with my Alex! Before the war, Alex was the most worthless dandy in the world and he never had a thought beyond a new cravat and getting drunk and shooting somebody and chasing girls who were no better than they should be. But look at him now! He learned farming because he had to learn. He'd have starved and so would all of us. Now he raises the best cotton in the County--yes, Miss! It's a heap better than Tara cotton!--and he knows what to do with hogs and chickens. Ha! He's a fine boy for all his bad temper. He knows how to bide his time and change with changing ways and when all this Reconstruction misery is over, you're going to see my Alex as rich a man as his father and his grandfather were. But Ashley--"

 

Scarlett was smarting at the slight to Ashley.

 

"It all sounds like tootle to me," she said coldly.

 

"Well, it shouldn't," said Grandma, fastening a sharp eye upon her. "For it's just exactly the course you've been following since you went to Atlanta. Oh, yes! We hear of your didoes, even if we are buried down here in the country. You've changed with the changing times too. We hear how you suck up to the Yankees and the white trash and the new-rich Carpetbaggers to get money out of them. Butter doesn't melt in your mouth from all I can hear. Well, go to it, I say. And get every cent out of them you can, but when you've got enough money, kick them in the face, because they can't serve you any longer. Be sure you do that and do it properly, for trash hanging onto your coat tails can ruin you."

 

Scarlett looked at her, her brow wrinkling with the effort to digest the words. They still didn't make much sense and she was still angry at Ashley being called a turtle on his back.

 

"I think you're wrong about Ashley," she said abruptly.

 

"Scarlett, you just aren't smart."

 

"That's your opinion," said Scarlett rudely, wishing it were permissible to smack old ladies' jaws.

 

"Oh, you're smart enough about dollars and cents. That's a man's way of being smart. But you aren't smart at all like a woman. You aren't a speck smart about folks."

 

Scarlett's eyes began to snap fire and her hands to clench and unclench.

 

"I've made you good and mad, haven't I?" asked the old lady, smiling. "Well, I aimed to do just that."

 

"Oh, you did, did you? And why, pray?"

 

"I had good and plenty reasons."

 

Grandma sank back in her chair and Scarlett suddenly realized that she looked very tired and incredibly old. The tiny clawlike hands folded over the fan were yellow and waxy as a dead person's. The anger went out of Scarlett's heart as a thought came to her. She leaned over and took one of the hands in hers.

 

"You're a mighty sweet old liar," she said. "You didn't mean a word of all this rigmarole. You've just been talking to keep my mind off Pa, haven't you?"

 

"Don't fiddle with me!" said Old Miss grumpily, jerking away her hand. "Partly for that reason, partly because what I've been telling you is the truth and you're just too stupid to realize it."

 

But she smiled a little and took the sting from her words. Scarlett's heart emptied itself of wrath about Ashley. It was nice to know Grandma hadn't meant any of it.

 

"Thank you, just the same. It was nice of you to talk to me--and I'm glad to know you're with me about Will and Suellen, even if-- even if a lot of other people do disapprove."

 

Mrs. Tarleton came down the hall, carrying two glasses of buttermilk. She did all domestic things badly and the glasses were slopping over.

 

"I had to go clear to the spring house to get it," she said. "Drink it quick because the folks are coming up from the burying ground. Scarlett, are you really going to let Suellen marry Will? Not that he isn't a sight too good for her but you know he is a Cracker and--"

 

Scarlett's eyes met those of Grandma. There was a wicked sparkle in the old eyes that found an answer in her own.

 

 

 To be continued

 

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