LongBench v2 / 6703933bbb02136c067ccd78 / Why does Ellen marry Mr. O’Hara?

7


SCARLETT O’HARA WAS not beautiful, but men seldom
realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton
twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the
delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of
French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish
father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin,
square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a
touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and
slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black
brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line
in her magnolia-white skin–that skin so prized by
Southern women and so carefully guarded with bon-
nets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool
shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation,
that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty
picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread
its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops
and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco
slippers her father had recently brought her from At-
lanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-
inch waist, the smallest in three counties, and the
tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured
for her sixteen years.
But for all the modesty of


PART ONE
her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted
smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small
white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poorly
concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face
were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at
variance with her decorous demeanor.
Her man-
ners had been imposed upon her by her mother’s
gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her
mammy; her eyes were her own.
On either side of her, the twins lounged easily in
their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall
mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked,
their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with sad-
dle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old,
six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of mus-
cle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their
eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in iden-
tical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they
were as much alike as two bolls of cotton.
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in
the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the dog-
wood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms
against the background of new green.
The twins’
horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red
as their masters’ hair; and around the horses’ legs
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PART ONE
quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds
that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they
went.
A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay
a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, pa-
tiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper.
Between the hounds and the horses and the twins
there was a kinship deeper than that of their con-
stant companionship. They were all healthy, thought-
less young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the
boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettle-
some and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to
those who knew how to handle them.
Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited
on hand and foot since infancy, the faces of the three
on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had
the vigor and alertness of country people who have
spent all their lives in the open and troubled their
heads very little with dull things in books. Life in
the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new
and, according to the standards of Augusta, Savannah
and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and
older sections of the South looked down their noses
at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Geor-
gia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried
no shame, provided a man was smart in the things
10


PART ONE
that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well,
shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies
with elegance and carrying one’s liquor like a gentle-
man were the things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and
they were equally outstanding in their notorious in-
ability to learn anything contained between the cov-
ers of books.
Their family had more money, more
horses, more slaves than any one else in the County,
but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor
Cracker neighbors.
It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent
were idling on the porch of Tara this April afternoon.
They had just been expelled from the University of
Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them
out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and
Boyd, had come home with them, because they re-
fused to remain at an institution where the twins were
not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their lat-
est expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not
willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville
Female Academy the year before, thought it just as
amusing as they did.
“I know you two don’t care about being expelled,
or Tom either,” she said. “But what about Boyd? He’s
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PART ONE
kind of set on getting an education, and you two have
pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Al-
abama and South Carolina and now Georgia. He’ll
never get finished at this rate.”
“Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee’s office over
in Fayetteville,” answered Brent carelessly. “Besides,
it don’t matter much. We’d have had to come home
before the term was out anyway.”
“Why?”
“The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day,
and you don’t suppose any of us would stay in college
with a war going on, do you?”
“You know there isn’t going to be any war,” said
Scarlett, bored.
“It’s all just talk.
Why, Ashley
Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our
commissioners in Washington would come to–to–an–
amicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Con-
federacy. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of
us to fight. There won’t be any war, and I’m tired of
hearing about it.”
“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indig-
nantly, as though they had been defrauded.
“Why, honey, of course there’s going to be a war,”
said Stuart. “The Yankees may be scared of us, but
after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of
12


PART ONE
Fort Sumter day before yesterday, they’ll have to fight
or stand branded as cowards before the whole world.
Why, the Confederacy–”
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
“If you say ‘war’ just once more, I’ll go in the house
and shut the door. I’ve never gotten so tired of any
one word in my life as ‘war,’ unless it’s ‘secession.’ Pa
talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gen-
tlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter
and States’ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I
could scream! And that’s all the boys talk about, too,
that and their old Troop. There hasn’t been any fun
at any party this spring because the boys can’t talk
about anything else. I’m mighty glad Georgia waited
till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have
ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say ‘war’
again, I’ll go in the house.”
She meant what she said, for she could never long
endure any conversation of which she was not the
chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, con-
sciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her
bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies’ wings.
The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them
to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her.
They thought none the less of her for her lack of in-
13


PART ONE
terest. Indeed, they thought more. War was men’s
business, not ladies’, and they took her attitude as ev-
idence of her femininity.
Having maneuvered them away from the boring
subject of war, she went back with interest to their im-
mediate situation.
“What did your mother say about you two being ex-
pelled again?”
The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their
mother’s conduct three months ago when they had
come home, by request, from the University of Vir-
ginia.
“Well,” said Stuart, “she hasn’t had a chance to say
anything yet. Tom and us left home early this morn-
ing before she got up, and Tom’s laying out over at
the Fontaines’ while we came over here.”
“Didn’t she say anything when you got home last
night?”
“We were in luck last night. Just before we got home
that new stallion Ma got in Kentucky last month was
brought in, and the place was in a stew.
The big
brute–he’s a grand horse, Scarlett; you must tell your
pa to come over and see him right away–he’d already
bitten a hunk out of his groom on the way down here
and he’d trampled two of Ma’s darkies who met the
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PART ONE
train at Jonesboro. And just before we got home, he’d
about kicked the stable down and half-killed Straw-
berry, Ma’s old stallion. When we got home, Ma was
out in the stable with a sackful of sugar smoothing
him down and doing it mighty well, too. The darkies
were hanging from the rafters, popeyed, they were so
scared, but Ma was talking to the horse like he was
folks and he was eating out of her hand. There ain’t
nobody like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us
she said: ‘In Heaven’s name, what are you four do-
ing home again? You’re worse than the plagues of
Egypt!’ And then the horse began snorting and rear-
ing and she said: ‘Get out of here! Can’t you see he’s
nervous, the big darling? I’ll tend to you four in the
morning!’ So we went to bed, and this morning we
got away before she could catch us and left Boyd to
handle her.”
“Do you suppose she’ll hit Boyd?” Scarlett, like the
rest of the County, could never get used to the way
small Mrs. Tarleton bullied her grown sons and laid
her riding crop on their backs if the occasion seemed
to warrant it.
Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on
her hands not only a large cotton plantation, a hun-
dred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse-
15


PART ONE
breeding farm in the state as well.
She was hot-
tempered and easily plagued by the frequent scrapes
of her four sons, and while no one was permitted to
whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and
then didn’t do the boys any harm.
“Of course she won’t hit Boyd. She never did beat
Boyd much because he’s the oldest and besides he’s
the runt of the litter,” said Stuart, proud of his six
feet two. “That’s why we left him at home to explain
things to her. God’lmighty, Ma ought to stop licking
us! We’re nineteen and Tom’s twenty-one, and she
acts like we’re six years old.”
“Will your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes
barbecue tomorrow?”
“She wants to, but Pa says he’s too dangerous. And,
anyway, the girls won’t let her. They said they were
going to have her go to one party at least like a lady,
riding in the carriage.”
“I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “It’s
rained nearly every day for a week. There’s nothing
worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.”
“Oh, it’ll be clear tomorrow and hot as June,” said
Stuart. “Look at that sunset. I never saw one redder.
You can always tell weather by sunsets.”
They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald
16


PART ONE
O’Hara’s newly plowed cotton fields toward the red
horizon. Now that the sun was setting in a welter
of crimson behind the hills across the Flint River, the
warmth of the April day was ebbing into a faint but
balmy chill.
Spring had come early that year, with warm quick
rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms
and dogwood dappling with white stars the dark
river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing
was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sun-
set colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay
to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, wait-
ing upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish
on the sandy tops of furrows, vermilion and scarlet
and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the
trenches.
The whitewashed brick plantation house
seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spi-
raling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at
the moment when the pink-tipped waves were break-
ing into surf. For here were no long, straight furrows,
such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the
flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth
of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country
of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to
keep the rich earth from washing down into the river
bottoms.
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PART ONE
It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains,
brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the
world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peace-
ful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a
land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest
shade. The plantation clearings and miles of cotton
fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent.
At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool
even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinis-
ter, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-
old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: “Be careful!
Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back
again.”
To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds
of hooves, the jingling of harness chains and the shrill
careless laughter of negro voices, as the field hands
and mules came in from the fields. From within the
house floated the soft voice of Scarlett’s mother, Ellen
O’Hara, as she called to the little black girl who car-
ried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish
voice answered “Yas’m,” and there were sounds of
footsteps going out the back way toward the smoke-
house where Ellen would ration out the food to the
home-coming hands. There was the click of china and
the rattle of silver as Pork, the valet-butler of Tara, laid
the table for supper.
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PART ONE
At these last sounds, the twins realized it was time
they were starting home. But they were loath to face
their mother and they lingered on the porch of Tara,
momentarily expecting Scarlett to give them an invi-
tation to supper.
“Look, Scarlett. About tomorrow,” said Brent. “Just
because we’ve been away and didn’t know about
the barbecue and the ball, that’s no reason why we
shouldn’t get plenty of dances tomorrow night. You
haven’t promised them all, have you?”
“Well, I have! How did I know you all would be
home? I couldn’t risk being a wallflower just waiting
on you two.”
“You a wallflower!” The boys laughed uproariously.
“Look, honey. You’ve got to give me the first waltz
and Stu the last one and you’ve got to eat supper with
us. We’ll sit on the stair landing like we did at the last
ball and get Mammy Jincy to come tell our fortunes
again.”
“I don’t like Mammy Jincy’s fortunes. You know she
said I was going to marry a gentleman with jet-black
hair and a long black mustache, and I don’t like black-
haired gentlemen.”
“You like ‘em red-headed, don’t you, honey?”
grinned Brent. “Now, come on, promise us all the
19


PART ONE
waltzes and the supper.”
“If you’ll promise, we’ll tell you a secret,” said Stu-
art.
“What?” cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.
“Is it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it
is, you know we promised not to tell.”
“Well, Miss Pitty told us.”
“Miss Who?”
“You know, Ashley Wilkes’ cousin who lives in At-
lanta, Miss Pittypat Hamilton–Charles and Melanie
Hamilton’s aunt.”
“I do, and a sillier old lady I never met in all my
life.”
“Well, when we were in Atlanta yesterday, waiting
for the home train, her carriage went by the depot and
she stopped and talked to us, and she told us there
was going to be an engagement announced tomorrow
night at the Wilkes ball.”
“Oh. I know about that,” said Scarlett in disappoint-
ment. “That silly nephew of hers, Charlie Hamilton,
and Honey Wilkes. Everybody’s known for years that
they’d get married some time, even if he did seem
kind of lukewarm about it.”
“Do you think he’s silly?” questioned Brent. “Last
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PART ONE
Christmas you sure let him buzz round you plenty.”
“I couldn’t help him buzzing,” Scarlett shrugged
negligently. “I think he’s an awful sissy.”
“Besides, it isn’t his engagement that’s going to be
announced,” said Stuart triumphantly. “It’s Ashley’s
to Charlie’s sister, Miss Melanie!”
Scarlett’s face did not change but her lips went
white–like a person who has received a stunning
blow without warning and who, in the first moments
of shock, does not realize what has happened. So still
was her face as she stared at Stuart that he, never ana-
lytic, took it for granted that she was merely surprised
and very interested.
“Miss Pitty told us they hadn’t intended announc-
ing it till next year, because Miss Melly hasn’t been
very well; but with all the war talk going around, ev-
erybody in both families thought it would be better
to get married soon. So it’s to be announced tomor-
row night at the supper intermission. Now, Scarlett,
we’ve told you the secret, so you’ve got to promise to
eat supper with us.”
“Of course I will,” Scarlett said automatically.
“And all the waltzes?”
“All.”
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PART ONE
“You’re sweet! I’ll bet the other boys will be hopping
mad.”
“Let ‘em be mad,” said Brent. “We two can handle
‘em. Look, Scarlett. Sit with us at the barbecue in the
morning.”
“What?”
Stuart repeated his request.
“Of course.”
The twins looked at each other jubilantly but with
some surprise.
Although they considered them-
selves Scarlett’s favored suitors, they had never be-
fore gained tokens of this favor so easily.
Usually
she made them beg and plead, while she put them
off, refusing to give a Yes or No answer, laughing if
they sulked, growing cool if they became angry. And
here she had practically promised them the whole of
tomorrow–seats by her at the barbecue, all the waltzes
(and they’d see to it that the dances were all waltzes!)
and the supper intermission. This was worth getting
expelled from the university.
Filled with new enthusiasm by their success, they
lingered on, talking about the barbecue and the ball
and Ashley Wilkes and Melanie Hamilton, interrupt-
ing each other, making jokes and laughing at them,
hinting broadly for invitations to supper. Some time
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PART ONE
had passed before they realized that Scarlett was hav-
ing very little to say.
The atmosphere had some-
how changed. Just how, the twins did not know, but
the fine glow had gone out of the afternoon. Scar-
lett seemed to be paying little attention to what they
said, although she made the correct answers. Sensing
something they could not understand, baffled and an-
noyed by it, the twins struggled along for a while, and
then rose reluctantly, looking at their watches.
The sun was low across the new-plowed fields and
the tall woods across the river were looming blackly
in silhouette. Chimney swallows were darting swiftly
across the yard, and chickens, ducks and turkeys
were waddling and strutting and straggling in from
the fields.
Stuart bellowed: “Jeems!”
And after an interval
a tall black boy of their own age ran breathlessly
around the house and out toward the tethered horses.
Jeems was their body servant and, like the dogs, ac-
companied them everywhere.
He had been their
childhood playmate and had been given to the twins
for their own on their tenth birthday. At the sight of
him, the Tarleton hounds rose up out of the red dust
and stood waiting expectantly for their masters. The
boys bowed, shook hands and told Scarlett they’d be
23


PART ONE
over at the Wilkeses’ early in the morning, waiting
for her. Then they were off down the walk at a rush,
mounted their horses and, followed by Jeems, went
down the avenue of cedars at a gallop, waving their
hats and yelling back to her.
When they had rounded the curve of the dusty road
that hid them from Tara, Brent drew his horse to a
stop under a clump of dogwood. Stuart halted, too,
and the darky boy pulled up a few paces behind
them. The horses, feeling slack reins, stretched down
their necks to crop the tender spring grass, and the pa-
tient hounds lay down again in the soft red dust and
looked up longingly at the chimney swallows circling
in the gathering dusk. Brent’s wide ingenuous face
was puzzled and mildly indignant.
“Look,” he said. “Don’t it look to you like she would
of asked us to stay for supper?”
“I thought she would,” said Stuart. “I kept waiting
for her to do it, but she didn’t. What do you make of
it?”
“I don’t make anything of it. But it just looks to me
like she might of. After all, it’s our first day home and
she hasn’t seen us in quite a spell. And we had lots
more things to tell her.”
“It looked to me like she was mighty glad to see us
24


PART ONE
when we came.”
“I thought so, too.”
“And then, about a half-hour ago, she got kind of
quiet, like she had a headache.”
“I noticed that but I didn’t pay it any mind then.
What do you suppose ailed her?”
“I dunno. Do you suppose we said something that
made her mad?”
They both thought for a minute.
“I can’t think of anything. Besides, when Scarlett
gets mad, everybody knows it. She don’t hold herself
in like some girls do.”
“Yes, that’s what I like about her.
She don’t go
around being cold and hateful when she’s mad–she
tells you about it. But it was something we did or
said that made her shut up talking and look sort of
sick. I could swear she was glad to see us when we
came and was aiming to ask us to supper.”
“You don’t suppose it’s because we got expelled?”
“Hell, no! Don’t be a fool. She laughed like every-
thing when we told her about it. And besides Scarlett
don’t set any more store by book learning than we
do.”
Brent turned in the saddle and called to the negro
25


PART ONE
groom.
“Jeems!”
“Suh?”
“You heard what we were talking to Miss Scarlett
about?”
“Nawsuh, Mist’ Brent! Huccome you think Ah be
spyin’ on w’ite folks?”
“Spying, my God!
You darkies know everything
that goes on. Why, you liar, I saw you with my own
eyes sidle round the corner of the porch and squat in
the cape jessamine bush by the wall. Now, did you
hear us say anything that might have made Miss Scar-
lett mad– or hurt her feelings?”
Thus appealed to, Jeems gave up further pretense of
not having overheard the conversation and furrowed
his black brow.
“Nawsuh, Ah din’ notice y’all say anything ter mek
her mad. Look ter me lak she sho glad ter see you an’
sho had missed you, an’ she cheep along happy as a
bird, tell ‘bout de time y’all got ter talkin’ ‘bout Mist’
Ashley an’ Miss Melly Hamilton gittin’ mah’ied. Den
she quiet down lak a bird w’en de hawk fly ober.”
The twins looked at each other and nodded, but
without comprehension.
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PART ONE
“Jeems is right. But I don’t see why,” said Stuart.
“My Lord! Ashley don’t mean anything to her, ‘cept
a friend. She’s not crazy about him. It’s us she’s crazy
about.”
Brent nodded an agreement.
“But do you suppose,” he said, “that maybe Ashley
hadn’t told her he was going to announce it tomorrow
night and she was mad at him for not telling her, an
old friend, before he told everybody else? Girls set a
big store on knowing such things first.”
“Well, maybe. But what if he hadn’t told her it was
tomorrow? It was supposed to be a secret and a sur-
prise, and a man’s got a right to keep his own engage-
ment quiet, hasn’t he? We wouldn’t have known it if
Miss Melly’s aunt hadn’t let it out. But Scarlett must
have known he was going to marry Miss Melly some-
time. Why, we’ve known it for years. The Wilkes and
Hamiltons always marry their own cousins. Every-
body knew he’d probably marry her some day, just
like Honey Wilkes is going to marry Miss Melly’s
brother, Charles.”
“Well, I give it up. But I’m sorry she didn’t ask us to
supper. I swear I don’t want to go home and listen to
Ma take on about us being expelled. It isn’t as if this
was the first time.”
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PART ONE
“Maybe Boyd will have smoothed her down by
now. You know what a slick talker that little varmint
is. You know he always can smooth her down.”
“Yes, he can do it, but it takes Boyd time. He has
to talk around in circles till Ma gets so confused that
she gives up and tells him to save his voice for his law
practice. But he ain’t had time to get good started yet.
Why, I’ll bet you Ma is still so excited about the new
horse that she’ll never even realize we’re home again
till she sits down to supper tonight and sees Boyd.
And before supper is over she’ll be going strong and
breathing fire. And it’ll be ten o’clock before Boyd
gets a chance to tell her that it wouldn’t have been
honorable for any of us to stay in college after the way
the Chancellor talked to you and me. And it’ll be mid-
night before he gets her turned around to where she’s
so mad at the Chancellor she’ll be asking Boyd why
he didn’t shoot him. No, we can’t go home till after
midnight.”
The twins looked at each other glumly. They were
completely fearless of wild horses, shooting affrays
and the indignation of their neighbors, but they had a
wholesome fear of their red-haired mother’s outspo-
ken remarks and the riding crop that she did not scru-
ple to lay across their breeches.
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PART ONE
“Well, look,” said Brent.
“Let’s go over to the
Wilkes. Ashley and the girls’ll be glad to have us for
supper.”
Stuart looked a little discomforted.
“No, don’t let’s go there. They’ll be in a stew getting
ready for the barbecue tomorrow and besides–”
“Oh, I forgot about that,” said Brent hastily. “No,
don’t let’s go there.”
They clucked to their horses and rode along in si-
lence for a while, a flush of embarrassment on Stu-
art’s brown cheeks. Until the previous summer, Stu-
art had courted India Wilkes with the approbation
of both families and the entire County. The County
felt that perhaps the cool and contained India Wilkes
would have a quieting effect on him. They fervently
hoped so, at any rate. And Stuart might have made
the match, but Brent had not been satisfied.
Brent
liked India but he thought her mighty plain and tame,
and he simply could not fall in love with her him-
self to keep Stuart company. That was the first time
the twins’ interest had ever diverged, and Brent was
resentful of his brother’s attentions to a girl who
seemed to him not at all remarkable.
Then, last summer at a political speaking in a grove
of oak trees at Jonesboro, they both suddenly became
29


PART ONE
aware of Scarlett O’Hara. They had known her for
years, and, since their childhood, she had been a fa-
vorite playmate, for she could ride horses and climb
trees almost as well as they. But now to their amaze-
ment she had become a grown-up young lady and
quite the most charming one in all the world.
They noticed for the first time how her green
eyes danced, how deep her dimples were when she
laughed, how tiny her hands and feet and what a
small waist she had. Their clever remarks sent her
into merry peals of laughter and, inspired by the
thought that she considered them a remarkable pair,
they fairly outdid themselves.
It was a memorable day in the life of the twins.
Thereafter, when they talked it over, they always
wondered just why they had failed to notice Scarlett’s
charms before. They never arrived at the correct an-
swer, which was that Scarlett on that day had decided
to make them notice. She was constitutionally unable
to endure any man being in love with any woman
not herself, and the sight of India Wilkes and Stuart
at the speaking had been too much for her predatory
nature. Not content with Stuart alone, she had set her
cap for Brent as well, and with a thoroughness that
overwhelmed the two of them.
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PART ONE
Now they were both in love with her, and India
Wilkes and Letty Munroe, from Lovejoy, whom Brent
had been half-heartedly courting, were far in the back
of their minds. Just what the loser would do, should
Scarlett accept either one of them, the twins did not
ask. They would cross that bridge when they came
to it. For the present they were quite satisfied to be in
accord again about one girl, for they had no jealousies
between them. It was a situation which interested the
neighbors and annoyed their mother, who had no lik-
ing for Scarlett.
“It will serve you right if that sly piece does accept
one of you,” she said. “Or maybe she’ll accept both of
you, and then you’ll have to move to Utah, if the Mor-
mons’ll have you–which I doubt. . . . All that both-
ers me is that some one of these days you’re both go-
ing to get lickered up and jealous of each other about
that two-faced, little, green-eyed baggage, and you’ll
shoot each other. But that might not be a bad idea
either.”
Since the day of the speaking, Stuart had been un-
comfortable in India’s presence. Not that India ever
reproached him or even indicated by look or ges-
ture that she was aware of his abruptly changed al-
legiance. She was too much of a lady. But Stuart felt
31


PART ONE
guilty and ill at ease with her. He knew he had made
India love him and he knew that she still loved him
and, deep in his heart, he had the feeling that he had
not played the gentleman. He still liked her tremen-
dously and respected her for her cool good breed-
ing, her book learning and all the sterling qualities
she possessed. But, damn it, she was just so pallid
and uninteresting and always the same, beside Scar-
lett’s bright and changeable charm. You always knew
where you stood with India and you never had the
slightest notion with Scarlett.
That was enough to
drive a man to distraction, but it had its charm.
“Well, let’s go over to Cade Calvert’s and have
supper.
Scarlett said Cathleen was home from
Charleston. Maybe she’ll have some news about Fort
Sumter that we haven’t heard.”
“Not Cathleen. I’ll lay you two to one she didn’t
even know the fort was out there in the harbor, much
less that it was full of Yankees until we shelled them
out. All she’ll know about is the balls she went to and
the beaux she collected.”
“Well, it’s fun to hear her gabble. And it’ll be some-
where to hide out till Ma has gone to bed.”
“Well, hell! I like Cathleen and she is fun and I’d
like to hear about Caro Rhett and the rest of the
32


PART ONE
Charleston folks; but I’m damned if I can stand sitting
through another meal with that Yankee stepmother of
hers.”
“Don’t be too hard on her, Stuart. She means well.”
“I’m not being hard on her. I feel sorry for her, but
I don’t like people I’ve got to feel sorry for. And she
fusses around so much, trying to do the right thing
and make you feel at home, that she always man-
ages to say and do just exactly the wrong thing. She
gives me the fidgets! And she thinks Southerners are
wild barbarians. She even told Ma so. She’s afraid of
Southerners. Whenever we’re there she always looks
scared to death.
She reminds me of a skinny hen
perched on a chair, her eyes kind of bright and blank
and scared, all ready to flap and squawk at the slight-
est move anybody makes.”
“Well, you can’t blame her. You did shoot Cade in
the leg.”
“Well, I was lickered up or I wouldn’t have done it,”
said Stuart. “And Cade never had any hard feelings.
Neither did Cathleen or Raiford or Mr. Calvert. It was
just that Yankee stepmother who squalled and said I
was a wild barbarian and decent people weren’t safe
around uncivilized Southerners.”
“Well, you can’t blame her. She’s a Yankee and ain’t
33


PART ONE
got very good manners; and, after all, you did shoot
him and he is her stepson.”
“Well, hell! That’s no excuse for insulting me! You
are Ma’s own blood son, but did she take on that time
Tony Fontaine shot you in the leg? No, she just sent
for old Doc Fontaine to dress it and asked the doctor
what ailed Tony’s aim. Said she guessed licker was
spoiling his marksmanship. Remember how mad that
made Tony?”
Both boys yelled with laughter.
“Ma’s a card!”
said Brent with loving approval.
“You can always count on her to do the right thing
and not embarrass you in front of folks.”
“Yes, but she’s mighty liable to talk embarrass-
ing in front of Father and the girls when we get
home tonight,” said Stuart gloomily. “Look, Brent. I
guess this means we don’t go to Europe. You know
Mother said if we got expelled from another college
we couldn’t have our Grand Tour.”
“Well, hell! We don’t care, do we? What is there to
see in Europe? I’ll bet those foreigners can’t show us
a thing we haven’t got right here in Georgia. I’ll bet
their horses aren’t as fast or their girls as pretty, and
I know damn well they haven’t got any rye whisky
that can touch Father’s.”
34


PART ONE
“Ashley Wilkes said they had an awful lot of scenery
and music. Ashley liked Europe. He’s always talking
about it.”
“Well–you know how the Wilkes are. They are kind
of queer about music and books and scenery. Mother
says it’s because their grandfather came from Vir-
ginia. She says Virginians set quite a store by such
things.”
“They can have ‘em. Give me a good horse to ride
and some good licker to drink and a good girl to court
and a bad girl to have fun with and anybody can have
their Europe. . . . What do we care about missing the
Tour? Suppose we were in Europe now, with the war
coming on? We couldn’t get home soon enough. I’d
heap rather go to a war than go to Europe.”
“So would I, any day. . . . Look, Brent! I know where
we can go for supper. Let’s ride across the swamp to
Abel Wynder’s place and tell him we’re all four home
again and ready for drill.”
“That’s an idea!”
cried Brent with enthusiasm.
“And we can hear all the news of the Troop and find
out what color they finally decided on for the uni-
forms.”
“If it’s Zouave, I’m damned if I’ll go in the troop. I’d
feel like a sissy in those baggy red pants. They look
35


PART ONE
like ladies’ red flannel drawers to me.”
“Is y’all aimin’ ter go ter Mist’ Wynder’s? ‘Cause ef
you is, you ain’ gwine git much supper,” said Jeems.
“Dey cook done died, an’ dey ain’ bought a new one.
Dey got a fe’el han’ cookin’, an’ de niggers tells me
she is de wustest cook in de state.”
“Good God! Why don’t they buy another cook?”
“Huccome po’ w’ite trash buy any niggers? Dey ain’
never owned mo’n fo’ at de mostes’.”
There was frank contempt in Jeems’ voice.
His
own social status was assured because the Tarletons
owned a hundred negroes and, like all slaves of large
planters, he looked down on small farmers whose
slaves were few.
“I’m going to beat your hide off for that,” cried Stu-
art fiercely. Don’t you call Abel Wynder ‘po’ white.’
Sure he’s poor, but he ain’t trash; and I’m damned if
I’ll have any man, darky or white, throwing off on
him. There ain’t a better man in this County, or why
else did the Troop elect him lieutenant?”
“Ah ain’ never figgered dat out, mahseff,” replied
Jeems, undisturbed by his master’s scowl. “Look ter
me lak dey’d ‘lect all de awficers frum rich gemp-
mum, ‘stead of swamp trash.”
“He ain’t trash! Do you mean to compare him with
36


PART ONE
real white trash like the Slatterys? Able just ain’t rich.
He’s a small farmer, not a big planter, and if the boys
thought enough of him to elect him lieutenant, then
it’s not for any darky to talk impudent about him. The
Troop knows what it’s doing.”
The troop of cavalry had been organized three
months before, the very day that Georgia seceded
from the Union, and since then the recruits had been
whistling for war. The outfit was as yet unnamed,
though not for want of suggestions. Everyone had
his own idea on that subject and was loath to relin-
quish it, just as everyone had ideas about the color
and cut of the uniforms. “Clayton Wild Cats,” “Fire
Eaters,” “North Georgia Hussars,” “Zouaves,” “The
Inland Rifles” (although the Troop was to be armed
with pistols, sabers and bowie knives, and not with
rifles), “The Clayton Grays,” “The Blood and Thun-
derers,” “The Rough and Readys,” all had their ad-
herents. Until matters were settled, everyone referred
to the organization as the Troop and, despite the high-
sounding name finally adopted, they were known to
the end of their usefulness simply as “The Troop.”
The officers were elected by the members, for no
one in the County had had any military experience
except a few veterans of the Mexican and Seminole
37


PART ONE
wars and, besides, the Troop would have scorned a
veteran as a leader if they had not personally liked
him and trusted him. Everyone liked the four Tar-
leton boys and the three Fontaines, but regretfully re-
fused to elect them, because the Tarletons got lickered
up too quickly and liked to skylark, and the Fontaines
had such quick, murderous tempers. Ashley Wilkes
was elected captain, because he was the best rider in
the County and because his cool head was counted on
to keep some semblance of order. Raiford Calvert was
made first lieutenant, because everybody liked Raif,
and Able Wynder, son of a swamp trapper, himself a
small farmer, was elected second lieutenant.
Abel was a shrewd, grave giant, illiterate, kind of
heart, older than the other boys and with as good or
better manners in the presence of ladies. There was
little snobbery in the Troop. Too many of their fa-
thers and grandfathers had come up to wealth from
the small farmer class for that. Moreover, Able was
the best shot in the Troop, a real sharpshooter who
could pick out the eye of a squirrel at seventy-five
yards, and, too, he knew all about living outdoors,
building fires in the rain, tracking animals and finding
water. The Troop bowed to real worth and moreover,
because they liked him, they made him an officer. He
bore the honor gravely and with no untoward con-
38


PART ONE
ceit, as though it were only his due. But the planters’
ladies and the planters’ slaves could not overlook the
fact that he was not born a gentleman, even if their
men folks could.
In the beginning, the Troop had been recruited ex-
clusively from the sons of planters, a gentleman’s out-
fit, each man supplying his own horse, arms, equip-
ment, uniform and body servant. But rich planters
were few in the young county of Clayton, and, in or-
der to muster a full-strength troop, it had been nec-
essary to raise more recruits among the sons of small
farmers, hunters in the backwoods, swamp trappers,
Crackers and, in a very few cases, even poor whites,
if they were above the average of their class.
These latter young men were as anxious to fight the
Yankees, should war come, as were their richer neigh-
bors; but the delicate question of money arose. Few
small farmers owned horses. They carried on their
farm operations with mules and they had no surplus
of these, seldom more than four. The mules could not
be spared to go off to war, even if they had been ac-
ceptable for the Troop, which they emphatically were
not. As for the poor whites, they considered them-
selves well off if they owned one mule. The back-
woods folks and the swamp dwellers owned neither
39


PART ONE
horses nor mules. They lived entirely off the produce
of their lands and the game in the swamp, conduct-
ing their business generally by the barter system and
seldom seeing five dollars in cash a year, and horses
and uniforms were out of their reach. But they were
as fiercely proud in their poverty as the planters were
in their wealth, and they would accept nothing that
smacked of charity from their rich neighbors. So, to
save the feelings of all and to bring the Troop up
to full strength, Scarlett’s father, John Wilkes, Buck
Munroe, Jim Tarleton, Hugh Calvert, in fact every
large planter in the County with the one exception
of Angus MacIntosh, had contributed money to com-
pletely outfit the Troop, horse and man. The upshot
of the matter was that every planter agreed to pay for
equipping his own sons and a certain number of the
others, but the manner of handling the arrangements
was such that the less wealthy members of the outfit
could accept horses and uniforms without offense to
their honor.
The Troop met twice a week in Jonesboro to drill
and to pray for the war to begin.
Arrangements
had not yet been completed for obtaining the full
quota of horses, but those who had horses performed
what they imagined to be cavalry maneuvers in the
field behind the courthouse, kicked up a great deal
40


PART ONE
of dust, yelled themselves hoarse and waved the
Revolutionary-war swords that had been taken down
from parlor walls. Those who, as yet, had no horses
sat on the curb in front of Bullard’s store and watched
their mounted comrades, chewed tobacco and told
yarns. Or else engaged in shooting matches. There
was no need to teach any of the men to shoot. Most
Southerners were born with guns in their hands, and
lives spent in hunting had made marksmen of them
all.
From planters’ homes and swamp cabins, a varied
array of firearms came to each muster. There were
long squirrel guns that had been new when first the
Alleghenies were crossed, old muzzle-loaders that
had claimed many an Indian when Georgia was new,
horse pistols that had seen service in 1812, in the
Seminole wars and in Mexico, silver-mounted duel-
ing pistols, pocket derringers, double- barreled hunt-
ing pieces and handsome new rifles of English make
with shining stocks of fine wood.
Drill always ended in the saloons of Jonesboro, and
by nightfall so many fights had broken out that the
officers were hard put to ward off casualties until the
Yankees could inflict them. It was during one of these
brawls that Stuart Tarleton had shot Cade Calvert and
41


PART ONE
Tony Fontaine had shot Brent. The twins had been
at home, freshly expelled from the University of Vir-
ginia, at the time the Troop was organized and they
had joined enthusiastically; but after the shooting
episode, two months ago, their mother had packed
them off to the state university, with orders to stay
there. They had sorely missed the excitement of the
drills while away, and they counted education well
lost if only they could ride and yell and shoot off ri-
fles in the company of their friends.
“Well, let’s cut across country to Abel’s,” suggested
Brent. “We can go through Mr. O’Hara’s river bottom
and the Fontaine’s pasture and get there in no time.”
“We ain’ gwine git nothin’ ter eat ‘cept possum an’
greens,” argued Jeems.
“You ain’t going to get anything,” grinned Stuart.
“Because you are going home and tell Ma that we
won’t be home for supper.”
“No, Ah ain’!” cried Jeems in alarm. “No, Ah ain’!
Ah doan git no mo’ fun outer havin’ Miss Beetriss lay
me out dan y’all does. Fust place she’ll ast me huc-
come Ah let y’all git expelled agin. An’ nex’ thing,
huccome Ah din’ bring y’all home ternight so she
could lay you out. An’ den she’ll light on me lak a
duck on a June bug, an’ fust thing Ah know Ah’ll be
42


PART ONE
ter blame fer it all. Ef y’all doan tek me ter Mist’ Wyn-
der’s, Ah’ll lay out in de woods all night an’ maybe
de patterollers git me, ‘cause Ah heap ruther de pat-
terollers git me dan Miss Beetriss when she in a state.”
The twins looked at the determined black boy in
perplexity and indignation.
“He’d be just fool enough to let the patterollers get
him and that would give Ma something else to talk
about for weeks. I swear, darkies are more trouble.
Sometimes I think the Abolitionists have got the right
idea.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be right to make Jeems face what
we don’t want to face. We’ll have to take him. But,
look, you impudent black fool, if you put on any airs
in front of the Wynder darkies and hint that we all
the time have fried chicken and ham, while they don’t
have nothing but rabbit and possum, I’ll–I’ll tell Ma.
And we won’t let you go to the war with us, either.”
“Airs? Me put on airs fo’ dem cheap niggers? Naw-
suh, Ah got better manners. Ain’ Miss Beetriss taught
me manners same as she taught y’all?”
“She didn’t do a very good job on any of the three of
us,” said Stuart. “Come on, let’s get going.”
He backed his big red horse and then, putting
spurs to his side, lifted him easily over the split rail
43


PART ONE
fence into the soft field of Gerald O’Hara’s plantation.
Brent’s horse followed and then Jeems’, with Jeems
clinging to pommel and mane. Jeems did not like to
jump fences, but he had jumped higher ones than this
in order to keep up with his masters.
As they picked their way across the red furrows and
down the hill to the river bottom in the deepening
dusk, Brent yelled to his brother:
“Look, Stu! Don’t it seem like to you that Scarlett
WOULD have asked us to supper?”
“I kept thinking she would,” yelled Stuart. “Why do
you suppose...”
44


WHEN THE TWINS left Scarlett standing on the porch of
Tara and the last sound of flying hooves had died
away, she went back to her chair like a sleepwalker.
Her face felt stiff as from pain and her mouth actually
hurt from having stretched it, unwillingly, in smiles
to prevent the twins from learning her secret. She sat
down wearily, tucking one foot under her, and her
heart swelled up with misery, until it felt too large for
her bosom. It beat with odd little jerks; her hands
were cold, and a feeling of disaster oppressed her.
There were pain and bewilderment in her face, the be-
wilderment of a pampered child who has always had
her own way for the asking and who now, for the first
time, was in contact with the unpleasantness of life.
Ashley to marry Melanie Hamilton!
Oh, it couldn’t be true! The twins were mistaken.
They were playing one of their jokes on her. Ashley
couldn’t, couldn’t be in love with her. Nobody could,
not with a mousy little person like Melanie. Scarlett
recalled with contempt Melanie’s thin childish figure,
her serious heart-shaped face that was plain almost
to homeliness. And Ashley couldn’t have seen her in
months. He hadn’t been in Atlanta more than twice
since the house party he gave last year at Twelve


PART ONE
Oaks. No, Ashley couldn’t be in love with Melanie,
because–oh, she couldn’t be mistaken!–because he
was in love with her! She, Scarlett, was the one he
loved–she knew it!
Scarlett heard Mammy’s lumbering tread shaking
the floor of the hall and she hastily untucked her foot
and tried to rearrange her face in more placid lines. It
would never do for Mammy to suspect that anything
was wrong. Mammy felt that she owned the O’Haras,
body and soul, that their secrets were her secrets;
and even a hint of a mystery was enough to set her
upon the trail as relentlessly as a bloodhound. Scar-
lett knew from experience that, if Mammy’s curiosity
were not immediately satisfied, she would take up the
matter with Ellen, and then Scarlett would be forced
to reveal everything to her mother, or think up some
plausible lie.
Mammy emerged from the hall, a huge old woman
with the small, shrewd eyes of an elephant. She was
shining black, pure African, devoted to her last drop
of blood to the O’Haras, Ellen’s mainstay, the despair
of her three daughters, the terror of the other house
servants. Mammy was black, but her code of conduct
and her sense of pride were as high as or higher than
those of her owners. She had been raised in the bed-
46


PART ONE
room of Solange Robillard, Ellen O’Hara’s mother, a
dainty, cold, high-nosed French-woman, who spared
neither her children nor her servants their just pun-
ishment for any infringement of decorum. She had
been Ellen’s mammy and had come with her from Sa-
vannah to the up-country when she married. Whom
Mammy loved, she chastened. And, as her love for
Scarlett and her pride in her were enormous, the chas-
tening process was practically continuous.
“Is de gempmum gone? Huccome you din’ ast dem
ter stay fer supper, Miss Scarlett? Ah done tole Poke
ter lay two extry plates fer dem. Whar’s yo’ man-
ners?”
“Oh, I was so tired of hearing them talk about the
war that I couldn’t have endured it through supper,
especially with Pa joining in and shouting about Mr.
Lincoln.”
“You ain’ got no mo’ manners dan a fe’el han’, an’
after Miss Ellen an’ me done labored wid you. An’
hyah you is widout yo’ shawl! An’ de night air fixin’
ter set in! Ah done tole you an’ tole you ‘bout gittin’
fever frum settin’ in de night air wid nuthin’ on yo’
shoulders. Come on in de house, Miss Scarlett.”
Scarlett turned away from Mammy with studied
nonchalance, thankful that her face had been unno-
47


PART ONE
ticed in Mammy’s preoccupation with the matter of
the shawl.
“No, I want to sit here and watch the sunset. It’s so
pretty. You run get my shawl. Please, Mammy, and
I’ll sit here till Pa comes home.”
“Yo’ voice soun’ lak you catchin’ a cole,” said
Mammy suspiciously.
“Well, I’m not,” said Scarlett impatiently. “You fetch
me my shawl.”
Mammy waddled back into the hall and Scarlett
heard her call softly up the stairwell to the upstairs
maid.
“You, Rosa! Drap me Miss Scarlett’s shawl.” Then,
more loudly: “Wuthless nigger! She ain’ never whar
she does nobody no good. Now, Ah got ter climb up
an’ git it mahseff.”
Scarlett heard the stairs groan and she got softly
to her feet. When Mammy returned she would re-
sume her lecture on Scarlett’s breach of hospitality,
and Scarlett felt that she could not endure prating
about such a trivial matter when her heart was break-
ing.
As she stood, hesitant, wondering where she
could hide until the ache in her breast subsided a lit-
tle, a thought came to her, bringing a small ray of
hope. Her father had ridden over to Twelve Oaks, the
48


PART ONE
Wilkes plantation, that afternoon to offer to buy Dil-
cey, the broad wife of his valet, Pork. Dilcey was head
woman and midwife at Twelve Oaks, and, since the
marriage six months ago, Pork had deviled his mas-
ter night and day to buy Dilcey, so the two could live
on the same plantation. That afternoon, Gerald, his
resistance worn thin, had set out to make an offer for
Dilcey.
Surely, thought Scarlett, Pa will know whether this
awful story is true. Even if he hasn’t actually heard
anything this afternoon, perhaps he’s noticed some-
thing, sensed some excitement in the Wilkes family. If
I can just see him privately before supper, perhaps I’ll
find out the truth–that it’s just one of the twins’ nasty
practical jokes.
It was time for Gerald’s return and, if she expected
to see him alone, there was nothing for her to do ex-
cept meet him where the driveway entered the road.
She went quietly down the front steps, looking care-
fully over her shoulder to make sure Mammy was
not observing her from the upstairs windows. Seeing
no broad black face, turbaned in snowy white, peer-
ing disapprovingly from between fluttering curtains,
she boldly snatched up her green flowered skirts and
sped down the path toward the driveway as fast as
49


PART ONE
her small ribbon-laced slippers would carry her.
The dark cedars on either side of the graveled drive
met in an arch overhead, turning the long avenue into
a dim tunnel. As soon as she was beneath the gnarled
arms of the cedars, she knew she was safe from obser-
vation from the house and she slowed her swift pace.
She was panting, for her stays were laced too tightly
to permit much running, but she walked on as rapidly
as she could. Soon she was at the end of the driveway
and out on the main road, but she did not stop un-
til she had rounded a curve that put a large clump of
trees between her and the house.
Flushed and breathing hard, she sat down on a
stump to wait for her father.
It was past time for
him to come home, but she was glad that he was late.
The delay would give her time to quiet her breath-
ing and calm her face so that his suspicions would
not be aroused. Every moment she expected to hear
the pounding of his horse’s hooves and see him come
charging up the hill at his usual breakneck speed. But
the minutes slipped by and Gerald did not come. She
looked down the road for him, the pain in her heart
swelling up again.
“Oh, it can’t be true!” she thought. “Why doesn’t he
come?”
50


PART ONE
Her eyes followed the winding road, blood-red now
after the morning rain. In her thought she traced its
course as it ran down the hill to the sluggish Flint
River, through the tangled swampy bottoms and up
the next hill to Twelve Oaks where Ashley lived. That
was all the road meant now–a road to Ashley and the
beautiful white-columned house that crowned the hill
like a Greek Temple.
“Oh, Ashley! Ashley!” she thought, and her heart
beat faster.
Some of the cold sense of bewilderment and disaster
that had weighted her down since the Tarleton boys
told her their gossip was pushed into the background
of her mind, and in its place crept the fever that had
possessed her for two years.
It seemed strange now that when she was growing
up Ashley had never seemed so very attractive to her.
In childhood days, she had seen him come and go and
never given him a thought. But since that day two
years ago when Ashley, newly home from his three
years’ Grand Tour in Europe, had called to pay his
respects, she had loved him. It was as simple as that.
She had been on the front porch and he had rid-
den up the long avenue, dressed in gray broadcloth
with a wide black cravat setting off his frilled shirt to
51


PART ONE
perfection. Even now, she could recall each detail of
his dress, how brightly his boots shone, the head of a
Medusa in cameo on his cravat pin, the wide Panama
hat that was instantly in his hand when he saw her.
He had alighted and tossed his bridle reins to a pick-
aninny and stood looking up at her, his drowsy gray
eyes wide with a smile and the sun so bright on his
blond hair that it seemed like a cap of shining silver.
And he said, “So you’ve grown up, Scarlett.” And,
coming lightly up the steps, he had kissed her hand.
And his voice! She would never forget the leap of her
heart as she heard it, as if for the first time, drawling,
resonant, musical.
She had wanted him, in that first instant, wanted
him as simply and unreasoningly as she wanted food
to eat, horses to ride and a soft bed on which to lay
herself.
For two years he had squired her about the County,
to balls, fish fries, picnics and court days, never so of-
ten as the Tarleton twins or Cade Calvert, never so
importunate as the younger Fontaine boys, but, still,
never the week went by that Ashley did not come call-
ing at Tara.
True, he never made love to her, nor did the clear
gray eyes ever glow with that hot light Scarlett knew
52


PART ONE
so well in other men. And yet–and yet–she knew he
loved her. She could not be mistaken about it. Instinct
stronger than reason and knowledge born of experi-
ence told her that he loved her. Too often she had sur-
prised him when his eyes were neither drowsy nor
remote, when he looked at her with a yearning and a
sadness which puzzled her. She KNEW he loved her.
Why did he not tell her so? That she could not under-
stand. But there were so many things about him that
she did not understand.
He was courteous always, but aloof, remote. No one
could ever tell what he was thinking about, Scarlett
least of all. In a neighborhood where everyone said
exactly what he thought as soon as he thought it, Ash-
ley’s quality of reserve was exasperating. He was as
proficient as any of the other young men in the usual
County diversions, hunting, gambling, dancing and
politics, and was the best rider of them all; but he dif-
fered from all the rest in that these pleasant activities
were not the end and aim of life to him. And he stood
alone in his interest in books and music and his fond-
ness for writing poetry.
Oh, why was he so handsomely blond, so cour-
teously aloof, so maddeningly boring with his talk
about Europe and books and music and poetry and
53


PART ONE
things that interested her not at all–and yet so desir-
able? Night after night, when Scarlett went to bed
after sitting on the front porch in the semi-darkness
with him, she tossed restlessly for hours and com-
forted herself only with the thought that the very
next time he saw her he certainly would propose.
But the next time came and went, and the result was
nothing–nothing except that the fever possessing her
rose higher and hotter.
She loved him and she wanted him and she did not
understand him. She was as forthright and simple as
the winds that blew over Tara and the yellow river
that wound about it, and to the end of her days she
would never be able to understand a complexity. And
now, for the first time in her life, she was facing a com-
plex nature.
For Ashley was born of a line of men who used their
leisure for thinking, not doing, for spinning brightly
colored dreams that had in them no touch of reality.
He moved in an inner world that was more beauti-
ful than Georgia and came back to reality with re-
luctance. He looked on people, and he neither liked
nor disliked them. He looked on life and was neither
heartened nor saddened. He accepted the universe
and his place in it for what they were and, shrugging,
54


PART ONE
turned to his music and books and his better world.
Why he should have captivated Scarlett when his
mind was a stranger to hers she did not know. The
very mystery of him excited her curiosity like a door
that had neither lock nor key. The things about him
which she could not understand only made her love
him more, and his odd, restrained courtship only
served to increase her determination to have him for
her own. That he would propose some day she had
never doubted, for she was too young and too spoiled
ever to have known defeat. And now, like a thunder-
clap, had come this horrible news. Ashley to marry
Melanie! It couldn’t be true!
Why, only last week, when they were riding home
at twilight from Fairhill, he had said: “Scarlett, I have
something so important to tell you that I hardly know
how to say it.”
She had cast down her eyes demurely, her heart
beating with wild pleasure, thinking the happy mo-
ment had come. Then he had said: “Not now! We’re
nearly home and there isn’t time. Oh, Scarlett, what a
coward I am!” And putting spurs to his horse, he had
raced her up the hill to Tara.
Scarlett, sitting on the stump, thought of those
words which had made her so happy, and suddenly
55


PART ONE
they took on another meaning, a hideous meaning.
Suppose it was the news of his engagement he had
intended to tell her!
Oh, if Pa would only come home! She could not en-
dure the suspense another moment. She looked impa-
tiently down the road again, and again she was disap-
pointed.
The sun was now below the horizon and the red
glow at the rim of the world faded into pink. The sky
above turned slowly from azure to the delicate blue-
green of a robin’s egg, and the unearthly stillness of
rural twilight came stealthily down about her. Shad-
owy dimness crept over the countryside. The red fur-
rows and the gashed red road lost their magical blood
color and became plain brown earth. Across the road,
in the pasture, the horses, mules and cows stood qui-
etly with heads over the split-rail fence, waiting to be
driven to the stables and supper. They did not like the
dark shade of the thickets hedging the pasture creek,
and they twitched their ears at Scarlett as if apprecia-
tive of human companionship.
In the strange half-light, the tall pines of the river
swamp, so warmly green in the sunshine, were black
against the pastel sky, an impenetrable row of black
giants hiding the slow yellow water at their feet. On
56


PART ONE
the hill across the river, the tall white chimneys of
the Wilkes’ home faded gradually into the darkness
of the thick oaks surrounding them, and only far-
off pin points of supper lamps showed that a house
was here. The warm damp balminess of spring en-
compassed her sweetly with the moist smells of new-
plowed earth and all the fresh green things pushing
up to the air.
Sunset and spring and new-fledged greenery were
no miracle to Scarlett. Their beauty she accepted as
casually as the air she breathed and the water she
drank, for she had never consciously seen beauty in
anything but women’s faces, horses, silk dresses and
like tangible things.
Yet the serene half-light over
Tara’s well-kept acres brought a measure of quiet to
her disturbed mind.
She loved this land so much,
without even knowing she loved it, loved it as she
loved her mother’s face under the lamp at prayer
time.
Still there was no sign of Gerald on the quiet wind-
ing road. If she had to wait much longer, Mammy
would certainly come in search of her and bully her
into the house.
But even as she strained her eyes
down the darkening road, she heard a pounding of
hooves at the bottom of the pasture hill and saw the
57


PART ONE
horses and cows scatter in fright. Gerald O’Hara was
coming home across country and at top speed.
He came up the hill at a gallop on his thick-barreled,
long-legged hunter, appearing in the distance like a
boy on a too large horse. His long white hair standing
out behind him, he urged the horse forward with crop
and loud cries.
Filled with her own anxieties, she nevertheless
watched him with affectionate pride, for Gerald was
an excellent horseman.
“I wonder why he always wants to jump fences
when he’s had a few drinks,” she thought. “And af-
ter that fall he had right here last year when he broke
his knee. You’d think he’d learn. Especially when he
promised Mother on oath he’d never jump again.”
Scarlett had no awe of her father and felt him more
her contemporary than her sisters, for jumping fences
and keeping it a secret from his wife gave him a boy-
ish pride and guilty glee that matched her own plea-
sure in outwitting Mammy. She rose from her seat to
watch him.
The big horse reached the fence, gathered himself
and soared over as effortlessly as a bird, his rider
yelling enthusiastically, his crop beating the air, his
white curls jerking out behind him. Gerald did not
58


PART ONE
see his daughter in the shadow of the trees, and he
drew rein in the road, patting his horse’s neck with
approbation.
“There’s none in the County can touch you, nor in
the state,” he informed his mount, with pride, the
brogue of County Meath still heavy on his tongue in
spite of thirty-nine years in America. Then he hastily
set about smoothing his hair and settling his ruffled
shirt and his cravat which had slipped awry behind
one ear. Scarlett knew these hurried preenings were
being made with an eye toward meeting his wife with
the appearance of a gentleman who had ridden se-
dately home from a call on a neighbor. She knew also
that he was presenting her with just the opportunity
she wanted for opening the conversation without re-
vealing her true purpose.
She laughed aloud. As she had intended, Gerald
was startled by the sound; then he recognized her,
and a look both sheepish and defiant came over his
florid face. He dismounted with difficulty, because
his knee was stiff, and, slipping the reins over his arm,
stumped toward her.
“Well, Missy,” he said, pinching her cheek, “so,
you’ve been spying on me and, like your sister
Suellen last week, you’ll be telling your mother on
59


PART ONE
me?”
There was indignation in his hoarse bass voice but
also a wheedling note, and Scarlett teasingly clicked
her tongue against her teeth as she reached out to pull
his cravat into place. His breath in her face was strong
with Bourbon whisky mingled with a faint fragrance
of mint.
Accompanying him also were the smells
of chewing tobacco, well-oiled leather and horses–a
combination of odors that she always associated with
her father and instinctively liked in other men.
“No, Pa, I’m no tattletale like Suellen,” she assured
him, standing off to view his rearranged attire with a
judicious air.
Gerald was a small man, little more than five feet
tall, but so heavy of barrel and thick of neck that his
appearance, when seated, led strangers to think him
a larger man. His thickset torso was supported by
short sturdy legs, always incased in the finest leather
boots procurable and always planted wide apart like
a swaggering small boy’s. Most small people who
take themselves seriously are a little ridiculous; but
the bantam cock is respected in the barnyard, and so it
was with Gerald. No one would ever have the temer-
ity to think of Gerald O’Hara as a ridiculous little fig-
ure.
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PART ONE
He was sixty years old and his crisp curly hair was
silver-white, but his shrewd face was unlined and his
hard little blue eyes were young with the unworried
youthfulness of one who has never taxed his brain
with problems more abstract than how many cards to
draw in a poker game. His was as Irish a face as could
be found in the length and breadth of the homeland
he had left so long ago–round, high colored, short
nosed, wide mouthed and belligerent.
Beneath his choleric exterior Gerald O’Hara had the
tenderest of hearts. He could not bear to see a slave
pouting under a reprimand, no matter how well de-
served, or hear a kitten mewing or a child crying; but
he had a horror of having this weakness discovered.
That everyone who met him did discover his kindly
heart within five minutes was unknown to him; and
his vanity would have suffered tremendously if he
had found it out, for he liked to think that when he
bawled orders at the top of his voice everyone trem-
bled and obeyed. It had never occurred to him that
only one voice was obeyed on the plantation–the soft
voice of his wife Ellen. It was a secret he would never
learn, for everyone from Ellen down to the stupidest
field hand was in a tacit and kindly conspiracy to
keep him believing that his word was law.
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PART ONE
Scarlett was impressed less than anyone else by his
tempers and his roarings. She was his oldest child
and, now that Gerald knew there would be no more
sons to follow the three who lay in the family burying
ground, he had drifted into a habit of treating her in a
man-to-man manner which she found most pleasant.
She was more like her father than her younger sisters,
for Carreen, who had been born Caroline Irene, was
delicate and dreamy, and Suellen, christened Susan
Elinor, prided herself on her elegance and ladylike de-
portment.
Moreover, Scarlett and her father were bound to-
gether by a mutual suppression agreement. If Gerald
caught her climbing a fence instead of walking half
a mile to a gate, or sitting too late on the front steps
with a beau, he castigated her personally and with ve-
hemence, but he did not mention the fact to Ellen or to
Mammy. And when Scarlett discovered him jumping
fences after his solemn promise to his wife, or learned
the exact amount of his losses at poker, as she always
did from County gossip, she refrained from mention-
ing the fact at the supper table in the artfully artless
manner Suellen had. Scarlett and her father each as-
sured the other solemnly that to bring such matters
to the ears of Ellen would only hurt her, and nothing
would induce them to wound her gentleness.
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PART ONE
Scarlett looked at her father in the fading light, and,
without knowing why, she found it comforting to be
in his presence. There was something vital and earthy
and coarse about him that appealed to her. Being the
least analytic of people, she did not realize that this
was because she possessed in some degree these same
qualities, despite sixteen years of effort on the part of
Ellen and Mammy to obliterate them.
“You look very presentable now,” she said, “and I
don’t think anyone will suspect you’ve been up to
your tricks unless you brag about them. But it does
seem to me that after you broke your knee last year,
jumping that same fence–”
“Well, may I be damned if I’ll have me own daugh-
ter telling me what I shall jump and not jump,” he
shouted, giving her cheek another pinch.
“It’s me
own neck, so it is. And besides, Missy, what are you
doing out here without your shawl?”
Seeing that he was employing familiar maneuvers
to extricate himself from unpleasant conversation, she
slipped her arm through his and said: “I was waiting
for you. I didn’t know you would be so late. I just
wondered if you had bought Dilcey.”
“Bought her I did, and the price has ruined me.
Bought her and her little wench, Prissy. John Wilkes
63


PART ONE
was for almost giving them away, but never will I
have it said that Gerald O’Hara used friendship in a
trade. I made him take three thousand for the two of
them.”
“In the name of Heaven, Pa, three thousand! And
you didn’t need to buy Prissy!”
“Has the time come when me own daughters sit
in judgment on me?”
shouted Gerald rhetorically.
“Prissy is a likely little wench and so–”
“I know her. She’s a sly, stupid creature,” Scarlett
rejoined calmly, unimpressed by his uproar. “And the
only reason you bought her was because Dilcey asked
you to buy her.”
Gerald looked crestfallen and embarrassed, as al-
ways when caught in a kind deed, and Scarlett
laughed outright at his transparency.
“Well, what if I did? Was there any use buying Dil-
cey if she was going to mope about the child? Well,
never again will I let a darky on this place marry off
it. It’s too expensive. Well, come on, Puss, let’s go in
to supper.”
The shadows were falling thicker now, the last
greenish tinge had left the sky and a slight chill was
displacing the balminess of spring. But Scarlett loi-
tered, wondering how to bring up the subject of Ash-
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PART ONE
ley without permitting Gerald to suspect her motive.
This was difficult, for Scarlett had not a subtle bone in
her body; and Gerald was so much like her he never
failed to penetrate her weak subterfuges, even as she
penetrated his. And he was seldom tactful in doing
it.
“How are they all over at Twelve Oaks?”
“About as usual. Cade Calvert was there and, after I
settled about Dilcey, we all set on the gallery and had
several toddies. Cade has just come from Atlanta, and
it’s all upset they are there and talking war and–”
Scarlett sighed. If Gerald once got on the subject of
war and secession, it would be hours before he relin-
quished it. She broke in with another line.
“Did they say anything about the barbecue tomor-
row?”
“Now that I think of it they did. Miss–what’s-her-
name–the sweet little thing who was here last year,
you know, Ashley’s cousin–oh, yes, Miss Melanie
Hamilton,
that’s the name–she and her brother
Charles have already come from Atlanta and–”
“Oh, so she did come?”
“She did, and a sweet quiet thing she is, with never
a word to say for herself, like a woman should be.
Come now, daughter, don’t lag. Your mother will be
65


PART ONE
hunting for us.”
Scarlett’s heart sank at the news. She had hoped
against hope that something would keep Melanie
Hamilton in Atlanta where she belonged, and the
knowledge that even her father approved of her sweet
quiet nature, so different from her own, forced her
into the open.
“Was Ashley there, too?”
“He was.” Gerald let go of his daughter’s arm and
turned, peering sharply into her face. “And if that’s
why you came out here to wait for me, why didn’t
you say so without beating around the bush?”
Scarlett could think of nothing to say, and she felt
her face growing red with annoyance.
“Well, speak up.”
Still she said nothing, wishing that it was permis-
sible to shake one’s father and tell him to hush his
mouth.
“He was there and he asked most kindly after you,
as did his sisters, and said they hoped nothing would
keep you from the barbecue tomorrow. I’ll warrant
nothing will,” he said shrewdly. “And now, daughter,
what’s all this about you and Ashley?”
“There is nothing,” she said shortly, tugging at his
66


PART ONE
arm. “Let’s go in, Pa.”
“So now ‘tis you wanting to go in,” he observed.
“But here I’m going to stand till I’m understanding
you. Now that I think of it, ‘tis strange you’ve been
recently. Has he been trifling with you? Has he asked
to marry you?”
“No,” she said shortly.
“Nor will he,” said Gerald.
Fury flamed in her, but Gerald waved her quiet with
a hand.
“Hold your tongue, Miss! I had it from John Wilkes
this afternoon in the strictest confidence that Ashley’s
to marry Miss Melanie. It’s to be announced tomor-
row.”
Scarlett’s hand fell from his arm. So it was true!
A pain slashed at her heart as savagely as a wild
animal’s fangs. Through it all, she felt her father’s
eyes on her, a little pitying, a little annoyed at being
faced with a problem for which he knew no answer.
He loved Scarlett, but it made him uncomfortable to
have her forcing her childish problems on him for a
solution. Ellen knew all the answers. Scarlett should
have taken her troubles to her.
“Is it a spectacle you’ve been making of yourself–
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PART ONE
of all of us?” he bawled, his voice rising as always
in moments of excitement. “Have you been running
after a man who’s not in love with you, when you
could have any of the bucks in the County?”
Anger and hurt pride drove out some of the pain.
“I haven’t been running after him.
It–it just sur-
prised me.”
“It’s lying you are!” said Gerald, and then, peering
at her stricken face, he added in a burst of kindliness:
“I’m sorry, daughter. But after all, you are nothing but
a child and there’s lots of other beaux.”
“Mother was only fifteen when she married you,
and I’m sixteen,” said Scarlett, her voice muffled.
“Your mother was different,” said Gerald. “She was
never flighty like you. Now come, daughter, cheer
up, and I’ll take you to Charleston next week to visit
your Aunt Eulalie and, what with all the hullabaloo
they are having over there about Fort Sumter, you’ll
be forgetting about Ashley in a week.”
“He thinks I’m a child,” thought Scarlett, grief and
anger choking utterance, “and he’s only got to dangle
a new toy and I’ll forget my bumps.”
“Now, don’t be jerking your chin at me,” warned
Gerald. “If you had any sense you’d have married
Stuart or Brent Tarleton long ago.
Think it over,
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PART ONE
daughter. Marry one of the twins and then the plan-
tations will run together and Jim Tarleton and I will
build you a fine house, right where they join, in that
big pine grove and–”
“Will you stop treating me like a child!” cried Scar-
lett. “I don’t want to go to Charleston or have a house
or marry the twins. I only want–” She caught herself
but not in time.
Gerald’s voice was strangely quiet and he spoke
slowly as if drawing his words from a store of thought
seldom used.
“It’s only Ashley you’re wanting, and you’ll not be
having him. And if he wanted to marry you, ‘twould
be with misgivings that I’d say Yes, for all the fine
friendship that’s between me and John Wilkes.” And,
seeing her startled look, he continued: “I want my girl
to be happy and you wouldn’t be happy with him.”
“Oh, I would! I would!”
“That you would not, daughter.
Only when like
marries like can there be any happiness.”
Scarlett had a sudden treacherous desire to cry out,
“But you’ve been happy, and you and Mother aren’t
alike,” but she repressed it, fearing that he would box
her ears for her impertinence.
“Our people and the Wilkes are different,” he went
69


PART ONE
on slowly, fumbling for words. “The Wilkes are dif-
ferent from any of our neighbors–different from any
family I ever knew. They are queer folk, and it’s best
that they marry their cousins and keep their queer-
ness to themselves.”
“Why, Pa, Ashley is not–”
“Hold your whist, Puss! I said nothing against the
lad, for I like him. And when I say queer, it’s not crazy
I’m meaning. He’s not queer like the Calverts who’d
gamble everything they have on a horse, or the Tar-
letons who turn out a drunkard or two in every litter,
or the Fontaines who are hot-headed little brutes and
after murdering a man for a fancied slight. That kind
of queerness is easy to understand, for sure, and but
for the grace of God Gerald O’Hara would be having
all those faults! And I don’t mean that Ashley would
run off with another woman, if you were his wife, or
beat you. You’d be happier if he did, for at least you’d
be understanding that. But he’s queer in other ways,
and there’s no understanding him at all. I like him,
but it’s neither heads nor tails I can make of most he
says. Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his
folderol about books and poetry and music and oil
paintings and such foolishness?”
“Oh, Pa,” cried Scarlett impatiently, “if I married
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PART ONE
him, I’d change all that!”
“Oh, you would, would you now?”
said Gerald
testily, shooting a sharp look at her. “Then it’s lit-
tle enough you are knowing of any man living, let
alone Ashley. No wife has ever changed a husband
one whit, and don’t you be forgetting that. And as
for changing a Wilkes–God’s nightgown, daughter!
The whole family is that way, and they’ve always
been that way. And probably always will. I tell you
they’re born queer.
Look at the way they go tear-
ing up to New York and Boston to hear operas and
see oil paintings. And ordering French and German
books by the crate from the Yankees! And there they
sit reading and dreaming the dear God knows what,
when they’d be better spending their time hunting
and playing poker as proper men should.”
“There’s nobody in the County sits a horse better
than Ashley,” said Scarlett, furious at the slur of ef-
feminacy flung on Ashley, “nobody except maybe his
father. And as for poker, didn’t Ashley take two hun-
dred dollars away from you just last week in Jones-
boro?”
“The Calvert boys have been blabbing again,” Ger-
ald said resignedly, “else you’d not be knowing the
amount. Ashley can ride with the best and play poker
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PART ONE
with the best–that’s me, Puss! And I’m not denying
that when he sets out to drink he can put even the
Tarletons under the table. He can do all those things,
but his heart’s not in it. That’s why I say he’s queer.”
Scarlett was silent and her heart sank. She could
think of no defense for this last, for she knew Gerald
was right. Ashley’s heart was in none of the pleas-
ant things he did so well. He was never more than
politely interested in any of the things that vitally in-
terested every one else.
Rightly interpreting her silence, Gerald patted her
arm and said triumphantly: “There now, Scarlett! You
admit ‘tis true. What would you be doing with a hus-
band like Ashley? ‘Tis moonstruck they all are, all
the Wilkes.” And then, in a wheedling tone: “When I
was mentioning the Tarletons the while ago, I wasn’t
pushing them.
They’re fine lads, but if it’s Cade
Calvert you’re setting your cap after, why, ‘tis the
same with me. The Calverts are good folk, all of them,
for all the old man marrying a Yankee. And when I’m
gone–Whist, darlin’, listen to me! I’ll leave Tara to you
and Cade–”
“I wouldn’t have Cade on a silver tray,” cried Scar-
lett in fury. “And I wish you’d quit pushing him at
me! I don’t want Tara or any old plantation. Planta-
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PART ONE
tions don’t amount to anything when–”
She was going to say “when you haven’t the man
you want,” but Gerald, incensed by the cavalier way
in which she treated his proffered gift, the thing
which, next to Ellen, he loved best in the whole world
uttered a roar.
“Do you stand there, Scarlett O’Hara, and tell me
that Tara–that land–doesn’t amount to anything?”
Scarlett nodded obstinately. Her heart was too sore
to care whether or not she put her father in a temper.
“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to
anything,” he shouted, his thick, short arms making
wide gestures of indignation, “for ‘tis the only thing
in this world that lasts, and don’t you be forgetting it!
‘Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting
for–worth dying for.”
“Oh, Pa,” she said disgustedly, “you talk like an
Irishman!”
“Have I ever been ashamed of it? No, ‘tis proud I
am. And don’t be forgetting that you are half Irish,
Miss! And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in
them the land they live on is like their mother. ‘Tis
ashamed of you I am this minute. I offer you the most
beautiful land in the world–saving County Meath in
the Old Country–and what do you do? You sniff!”
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PART ONE
Gerald had begun to work himself up into a pleasur-
able shouting rage when something in Scarlett’s woe-
begone face stopped him.
“But there, you’re young. ‘Twill come to you, this
love of land. There’s no getting away from it, if you’re
Irish.
You’re just a child and bothered about your
beaux. When you’re older, you’ll be seeing how ‘tis. .
. . Now, do you be making up your mind about Cade
or the twins or one of Evan Munroe’s young bucks,
and see how fine I turn you out!”
“Oh, Pa!”
By this time, Gerald was thoroughly tired of the
conversation and thoroughly annoyed that the prob-
lem should be upon his shoulders. He felt aggrieved,
moreover, that Scarlett should still look desolate after
being offered the best of the County boys and Tara,
too. Gerald liked his gifts to be received with clap-
ping of hands and kisses.
“Now, none of your pouts, Miss. It doesn’t matter
who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is
a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful.
For a
woman, love comes after marriage.”
“Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!”
“And a good notion it is! All this American busi-
ness of running around marrying for love, like ser-
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PART ONE
vants, like Yankees! The best marriages are when the
parents choose for the girl. For how can a silly piece
like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel? Now,
look at the Wilkes. What’s kept them prideful and
strong all these generations? Why, marrying the likes
of themselves, marrying the cousins their family al-
ways expects them to marry.”
“Oh,” cried Scarlett, fresh pain striking her as Ger-
ald’s words brought home the terrible inevitability of
the truth.
Gerald looked at her bowed head and shuffled his
feet uneasily.
“It’s not crying you are?” he questioned, fumbling
clumsily at her chin, trying to turn her face upward,
his own face furrowed with pity.
“No,” she cried vehemently, jerking away.
“It’s lying you are, and I’m proud of it. I’m glad
there’s pride in you, Puss. And I want to see pride in
you tomorrow at the barbecue. I’ll not be having the
County gossiping and laughing at you for mooning
your heart out about a man who never gave you a
thought beyond friendship.”
“He did give me a thought,” thought Scarlett, sor-
rowfully in her heart. “Oh, a lot of thoughts! I know
he did.
I could tell.
If I’d just had a little longer,
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PART ONE
I know I could have made him say– Oh, if it only
wasn’t that the Wilkes always feel that they have to
marry their cousins!”
Gerald took her arm and passed it through his.
“We’ll be going in to supper now, and all this is be-
tween us. I’ll not be worrying your mother with this–
nor do you do it either. Blow your nose, daughter.”
Scarlett blew her nose on her torn handkerchief,
and they started up the dark drive arm in arm, the
horse following slowly. Near the house, Scarlett was
at the point of speaking again when she saw her
mother in the dim shadows of the porch. She had on
her bonnet, shawl and mittens, and behind her was
Mammy, her face like a thundercloud, holding in her
hand the black leather bag in which Ellen O’Hara al-
ways carried the bandages and medicines she used
in doctoring the slaves.
Mammy’s lips were large
and pendulous and, when indignant, she could push
out her lower one to twice its normal length. It was
pushed out now, and Scarlett knew that Mammy was
seething over something of which she did not ap-
prove.
“Mr. O’Hara,” called Ellen as she saw the two com-
ing up the driveway–Ellen belonged to a generation
that was formal even after seventeen years of wedlock
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PART ONE
and the bearing of six children– “Mr. O’Hara, there is
illness at the Slattery house. Emmie’s baby has been
born and is dying and must be baptized. I am going
there with Mammy to see what I can do.”
Her voice was raised questioningly, as though she
hung on Gerald’s assent to her plan, a mere formality
but one dear to the heart of Gerald.
“In the name of God!”
blustered Gerald.
“Why
should those white trash take you away just at your
supper hour and just when I’m wanting to tell you
about the war talk that’s going on in Atlanta! Go, Mrs.
O’Hara. You’d not rest easy on your pillow the night
if there was trouble abroad and you not there to help.”
“She doan never git no res’ on her piller fer hoppin’
up at night time nursin’ niggers an po’ w’ite trash dat
could ten’ to deyseff,” grumbled Mammy in a mono-
tone as she went down the stairs toward the carriage
which was waiting in the side drive.
“Take my place at the table, dear,” said Ellen, patting
Scarlett’s cheek softly with a mittened hand.
In spite of her choked-back tears, Scarlett thrilled
to the never- failing magic of her mother’s touch, to
the faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet that came
from her rustling silk dress.
To Scarlett, there was
something breath-taking about Ellen O’Hara, a mir-
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PART ONE
acle that lived in the house with her and awed her
and charmed and soothed her.
Gerald helped his wife into the carriage and gave
orders to the coachman to drive carefully.
Toby,
who had handled Gerald’s horses for twenty years,
pushed out his lips in mute indignation at being told
how to conduct his own business. Driving off, with
Mammy beside him, each was a perfect picture of
pouting African disapproval.
“If I didn’t do so much for those trashy Slatterys that
they’d have to pay money for elsewhere,” fumed Ger-
ald, “they’d be willing to sell me their miserable few
acres of swamp bottom, and the County would be
well rid of them.” Then, brightening, in anticipation
of one of his practical jokes: “Come daughter, let’s go
tell Pork that instead of buying Dilcey, I’ve sold him
to John Wilkes.”
He tossed the reins of his horse to a small pick-
aninny standing near and started up the steps. He
had already forgotten Scarlett’s heartbreak and his
mind was only on plaguing his valet. Scarlett slowly
climbed the steps after him, her feet leaden.
She
thought that, after all, a mating between herself and
Ashley could be no queerer than that of her father
and Ellen Robillard O’Hara.
As always, she won-
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PART ONE
dered how her loud, insensitive father had managed
to marry a woman like her mother, for never were two
people further apart in birth, breeding and habits of
mind.
79


ELLEN O’HARA WAS thirty-two years old, and, accord-
ing to the standards of her day, she was a middle-
aged woman, one who had borne six children and
buried three. She was a tall woman, standing a head
higher than her fiery little husband, but she moved
with such quiet grace in her swaying hoops that the
height attracted no attention to itself. Her neck, ris-
ing from the black taffeta sheath of her basque, was
creamy-skinned, rounded and slender, and it seemed
always tilted slightly backward by the weight of her
luxuriant hair in its net at the back of her head. From
her French mother, whose parents had fled Haiti in
the Revolution of 1791, had come her slanting dark
eyes, shadowed by inky lashes, and her black hair;
and from her father, a soldier of Napoleon, she had
her long straight nose and her square-cut jaw that was
softened by the gentle curving of her cheeks. But only
from life could Ellen’s face have acquired its look of
pride that had no haughtiness, its graciousness, its
melancholy and its utter lack of humor.
She would have been a strikingly beautiful woman
had there been any glow in her eyes, any responsive
warmth in her smile or any spontaneity in her voice
that fell with gentle melody on the ears of her fam-


PART ONE
ily and her servants. She spoke in the soft slurring
voice of the coastal Georgian, liquid of vowels, kind
to consonants and with the barest trace of French ac-
cent. It was a voice never raised in command to a ser-
vant or reproof to a child but a voice that was obeyed
instantly at Tara, where her husband’s blustering and
roaring were quietly disregarded.
As far back as Scarlett could remember, her mother
had always been the same, her voice soft and sweet
whether in praising or in reproving, her manner effi-
cient and unruffled despite the daily emergencies of
Gerald’s turbulent household, her spirit always calm
and her back unbowed, even in the deaths of her three
baby sons. Scarlett had never seen her mother’s back
touch the back of any chair on which she sat. Nor had
she ever seen her sit down without a bit of needle-
work in her hands, except at mealtime, while attend-
ing the sick or while working at the bookkeeping of
the plantation. It was delicate embroidery if company
were present, but at other times her hands were oc-
cupied with Gerald’s ruffled shirts, the girls’ dresses
or garments for the slaves. Scarlett could not imag-
ine her mother’s hands without her gold thimble or
her rustling figure unaccompanied by the small negro
girl whose sole function in life was to remove bast-
ing threads and carry the rosewood sewing box from
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PART ONE
room to room, as Ellen moved about the house super-
intending the cooking, the cleaning and the wholesale
clothes-making for the plantation.
She had never seen her mother stirred from her aus-
tere placidity, nor her personal appointments any-
thing but perfect, no matter what the hour of day or
night. When Ellen was dressing for a ball or for guests
or even to go to Jonesboro for Court Day, it frequently
required two hours, two maids and Mammy to turn
her out to her own satisfaction; but her swift toilets in
times of emergency were amazing.
Scarlett, whose room lay across the hall from her
mother’s, knew from babyhood the soft sound of
scurrying bare black feet on the hardwood floor in the
hours of dawn, the urgent tappings on her mother’s
door, and the muffled, frightened negro voices that
whispered of sickness and birth and death in the long
row of whitewashed cabins in the quarters.
As a
child, she often had crept to the door and, peeping
through the tiniest crack, had seen Ellen emerge from
the dark room, where Gerald’s snores were rhythmic
and untroubled, into the flickering light of an upheld
candle, her medicine case under her arm, her hair
smoothed neatly place, and no button on her basque
unlooped.
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PART ONE
It had always been so soothing to Scarlett to hear
her mother whisper, firmly but compassionately, as
she tiptoed down the hall: “Hush, not so loudly. You
will wake Mr. O’Hara. They are not sick enough to
die.”
Yes, it was good to creep back into bed and know
that Ellen was abroad in the night and everything was
right.
In the mornings, after all-night sessions at births
and deaths, when old Dr. Fontaine and young Dr.
Fontaine were both out on calls and could not be
found to help her, Ellen presided at the breakfast ta-
ble as usual, her dark eyes circled with weariness but
her voice and manner revealing none of the strain.
There was a steely quality under her stately gentle-
ness that awed the whole household, Gerald as well
as the girls, though he would have died rather than
admit it.
Sometimes when Scarlett tiptoed at night to kiss her
tall mother’s cheek, she looked up at the mouth with
its too short, too tender upper lip, a mouth too eas-
ily hurt by the world, and wondered if it had ever
curved in silly girlish giggling or whispered secrets
through long nights to intimate girl friends. But no,
that wasn’t possible. Mother had always been just as
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PART ONE
she was, a pillar of strength, a fount of wisdom, the
one person who knew the answers to everything.
But Scarlett was wrong, for, years before, Ellen Ro-
billard of Savannah had giggled as inexplicably as
any fifteen-year-old in that charming coastal city and
whispered the long nights through with friends, ex-
changing confidences, telling all secrets but one. That
was the year when Gerald O’Hara, twenty-eight years
older than she, came into her life–the year, too, when
youth and her black-eyed cousin, Philippe Robillard,
went out of it. For when Philippe, with his snapping
eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took
with him the glow that was in Ellen’s heart and left
for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her
only a gentle shell.
But that was enough for Gerald, overwhelmed at
his unbelievable luck in actually marrying her. And
if anything was gone from her, he never missed it.
Shrewd man that he was, he knew that it was no less
than a miracle that he, an Irishman with nothing of
family and wealth to recommend him, should win the
daughter of one of the wealthiest and proudest fami-
lies on the Coast. For Gerald was a self-made man.
Gerald had come to America from Ireland when he
was twenty-one. He had come hastily, as many a bet-
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PART ONE
ter and worse Irishman before and since, with the
clothes he had on his back, two shillings above his
passage money and a price on his head that he felt
was larger than his misdeed warranted. There was no
Orangeman this side of hell worth a hundred pounds
to the British government or to the devil himself; but
if the government felt so strongly about the death
of an English absentee landlord’s rent agent, it was
time for Gerald O’Hara to be leaving and leaving sud-
denly. True, he had called the rent agent “a bastard of
an Orangeman,” but that, according to Gerald’s way
of looking at it, did not give the man any right to in-
sult him by whistling the opening bars of “The Boyne
Water.”
The Battle of the Boyne had been fought more than
a hundred years before, but, to the O’Haras and their
neighbors, it might have been yesterday when their
hopes and their dreams, as well as their lands and
wealth, went off in the same cloud of dust that en-
veloped a frightened and fleeing Stuart prince, leav-
ing William of Orange and his hated troops with their
orange cockades to cut down the Irish adherents of
the Stuarts.
For this and other reasons, Gerald’s family was not
inclined to view the fatal outcome of this quarrel as
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PART ONE
anything very serious, except for the fact that it was
charged with serious consequences.
For years, the
O’Haras had been in bad odor with the English con-
stabulary on account of suspected activities against
the government, and Gerald was not the first O’Hara
to take his foot in his hand and quit Ireland between
dawn and morning. His two oldest brothers, James
and Andrew, he hardly remembered, save as close-
lipped youths who came and went at odd hours of
the night on mysterious errands or disappeared for
weeks at a time, to their mother’s gnawing anxi-
ety. They had come to America years before, after
the discovery of a small arsenal of rifles buried un-
der the O’Hara pigsty.
Now they were successful
merchants in Savannah, “though the dear God alone
knows where that may be,” as their mother always
interpolated when mentioning the two oldest of her
male brood, and it was to them that young Gerald
was sent.
He left home with his mother’s hasty kiss on his
cheek and her fervent Catholic blessing in his ears,
and his father’s parting admonition, “Remember who
ye are and don’t be taking nothing off no man.” His
five tall brothers gave him good-by with admiring but
slightly patronizing smiles, for Gerald was the baby
and the little one of a brawny family.
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PART ONE
His five brothers and their father stood six feet and
over and broad in proportion, but little Gerald, at
twenty-one, knew that five feet four and a half inches
was as much as the Lord in His wisdom was going to
allow him. It was like Gerald that he never wasted re-
grets on his lack of height and never found it an obsta-
cle to his acquisition of anything he wanted. Rather, it
was Gerald’s compact smallness that made him what
he was, for he had learned early that little people
must be hardy to survive among large ones. And Ger-
ald was hardy.
His tall brothers were a grim, quiet lot, in whom the
family tradition of past glories, lost forever, rankled in
unspoken hate and crackled out in bitter humor. Had
Gerald been brawny, he would have gone the way
of the other O’Haras and moved quietly and darkly
among the rebels against the government. But Gerald
was “loud-mouthed and bullheaded,” as his mother
fondly phrased it, hair trigger of temper, quick with
his fists and possessed of a chip on his shoulder so
large as to be almost visible to the naked eye.
He
swaggered among the tall O’Haras like a strutting
bantam in a barnyard of giant Cochin roosters, and
they loved him, baited him affectionately to hear him
roar and hammered on him with their large fists no
more than was necessary to keep a baby brother in
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PART ONE
his proper place.
If the educational equipment which Gerald brought
to America was scant, he did not even know it. Nor
would he have cared if he had been told. His mother
had taught him to read and to write a clear hand. He
was adept at ciphering. And there his book knowl-
edge stopped. The only Latin he knew was the re-
sponses of the Mass and the only history the mani-
fold wrongs of Ireland. He knew no poetry save that
of Moore and no music except the songs of Ireland
that had come down through the years. While he en-
tertained the liveliest respect for those who had more
book learning than he, he never felt his own lack.
And what need had he of these things in a new coun-
try where the most ignorant of bogtrotters had made
great fortunes? in this country which asked only that
a man be strong and unafraid of work?
Nor did James and Andrew, who took him into their
store in Savannah, regret his lack of education. His
clear hand, his accurate figures and his shrewd ability
in bargaining won their respect, where a knowledge
of literature and a fine appreciation of music, had
young Gerald possessed them, would have moved
them to snorts of contempt.
America, in the early
years of the century, had been kind to the Irish. James
88


PART ONE
and Andrew, who had begun by hauling goods in
covered wagons from Savannah to Georgia’s inland
towns, had prospered into a store of their own, and
Gerald prospered with them.
He liked the South, and he soon became, in his own
opinion, a Southerner.
There was much about the
South–and Southerners–that he would never compre-
hend: but, with the wholeheartedness that was his na-
ture, he adopted its ideas and customs, as he under-
stood them, for his own–poker and horse racing, red-
hot politics and the code duello, States’ Rights and
damnation to all Yankees, slavery and King Cotton,
contempt for white trash and exaggerated courtesy to
women. He even learned to chew tobacco. There was
no need for him to acquire a good head for whisky, he
had been born with one.
But Gerald remained Gerald. His habits of living
and his ideas changed, but his manners he would not
change, even had he been able to change them. He
admired the drawling elegance of the wealthy rice
and cotton planters, who rode into Savannah from
their moss-hung kingdoms, mounted on thorough-
bred horses and followed by the carriages of their
equally elegant ladies and the wagons of their slaves.
But Gerald could never attain elegance. Their lazy,
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PART ONE
blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears, but his own
brisk brogue clung to his tongue. He liked the ca-
sual grace with which they conducted affairs of im-
portance, risking a fortune, a plantation or a slave on
the turn of a card and writing off their losses with
careless good humor and no more ado than when
they scattered pennies to pickaninnies. But Gerald
had known poverty, and he could never learn to lose
money with good humor or good grace. They were
a pleasant race, these coastal Georgians, with their
soft-voiced, quick rages and their charming incon-
sistencies, and Gerald liked them. But there was a
brisk and restless vitality about the young Irishman,
fresh from a country where winds blew wet and chill,
where misty swamps held no fevers, that set him
apart from these indolent gentlefolk of semi-tropical
weather and malarial marshes.
From them he learned what he found useful, and the
rest he dismissed. He found poker the most useful
of all Southern customs, poker and a steady head for
whisky; and it was his natural aptitude for cards and
amber liquor that brought to Gerald two of his three
most prized possessions, his valet and his plantation.
The other was his wife, and he could only attribute
her to the mysterious kindness of God.
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PART ONE
The valet, Pork by name, shining black, dignified
and trained in all the arts of sartorial elegance, was
the result of an all-night poker game with a planter
from St.
Simons Island, whose courage in a bluff
equaled Gerald’s but whose head for New Orleans
rum did not. Though Pork’s former owner later of-
fered to buy him back at twice his value, Gerald ob-
stinately refused, for the possession of his first slave,
and that slave the “best damn valet on the Coast,”
was the first step upward toward his heart’s desire,
Gerald wanted to be a slave owner and a landed gen-
tleman.
His mind was made up that he was not going to
spend all of his days, like James and Andrew, in bar-
gaining, or all his nights, by candlelight, over long
columns of figures.
He felt keenly, as his brothers
did not, the social stigma attached to those “in trade.”
Gerald wanted to be a planter. With the deep hunger
of an Irishman who has been a tenant on the lands his
people once had owned and hunted, he wanted to see
his own acres stretching green before his eyes. With
a ruthless singleness of purpose, he desired his own
house, his own plantation, his own horse, his own
slaves. And here in this new country, safe from the
twin perils of the land he had left–taxation that ate up
crops and barns and the ever-present threat of sud-
91


PART ONE
den confiscation–he intended to have them. But hav-
ing that ambition and bringing it to realization were
two different matters, he discovered as time went by.
Coastal Georgia was too firmly held by an entrenched
aristocracy for him ever to hope to win the place he
intended to have.
Then the hand of Fate and a hand of poker com-
bined to give him the plantation which he afterwards
called Tara, and at the same time moved him out of
the Coast into the upland country of north Georgia.
It was in a saloon in Savannah, on a hot night in
spring, when the chance conversation of a stranger
sitting near by made Gerald prick up his ears. The
stranger, a native of Savannah, had just returned af-
ter twelve years in the inland country. He had been
one of the winners in the land lottery conducted by
the State to divide up the vast area in middle Geor-
gia, ceded by the Indians the year before Gerald came
to America. He had gone up there and established a
plantation; but, now the house had burned down, he
was tired of the “accursed place” and would be most
happy to get it off his hands.
Gerald, his mind never free of the thought of own-
ing a plantation of his own, arranged an introduc-
tion, and his interest grew as the stranger told how
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PART ONE
the northern section of the state was filling up with
newcomers from the Carolinas and Virginia. Gerald
had lived in Savannah long enough to acquire a view-
point of the Coast–that all of the rest of the state was
backwoods, with an Indian lurking in every thicket.
In transacting business for O’Hara Brothers, he had
visited Augusta, a hundred miles up the Savannah
River, and he had traveled inland far enough to visit
the old towns westward from that city. He knew that
section to be as well settled as the Coast, but from the
stranger’s description, his plantation was more than
two hundred and fifty miles inland from Savannah
to the north and west, and not many miles south of
the Chattahoochee River.
Gerald knew that north-
ward beyond that stream the land was still held by the
Cherokees, so it was with amazement that he heard
the stranger jeer at suggestions of trouble with the In-
dians and narrate how thriving towns were growing
up and plantations prospering in the new country.
An hour later when the conversation began to lag,
Gerald, with a guile that belied the wide innocence of
his bright blue eyes, proposed a game. As the night
wore on and the drinks went round, there came a time
when all the others in the game laid down their hands
and Gerald and the stranger were battling alone. The
stranger shoved in all his chips and followed with
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PART ONE
the deed to his plantation. Gerald shoved in all his
chips and laid on top of them his wallet.
If the
money it contained happened to belong to the firm
of O’Hara Brothers, Gerald’s conscience was not suf-
ficiently troubled to confess it before Mass the follow-
ing morning. He knew what he wanted, and when
Gerald wanted something he gained it by taking the
most direct route. Moreover, such was his faith in his
destiny and four dueces that he never for a moment
wondered just how the money would be paid back
should a higher hand be laid down across the table.
“It’s no bargain you’re getting and I am glad not
to have to pay more taxes on the place,” sighed the
possessor of an “ace full,” as he called for pen and
ink. “The big house burned a year ago and the fields
are growing up in brush and seedling pine. But it’s
yours.”
“Never mix cards and whisky unless you were
weaned on Irish poteen,” Gerald told Pork gravely
the same evening, as Pork assisted him to bed. And
the valet, who had begun to attempt a brogue out of
admiration for his new master, made requisite answer
in a combination of Geechee and County Meath that
would have puzzled anyone except those two alone.
The muddy Flint River, running silently between
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PART ONE
walls of pine and water oak covered with tangled
vines, wrapped about Gerald’s new land like a curv-
ing arm and embraced it on two sides. To Gerald,
standing on the small knoll where the house had
been, this tall barrier of green was as visible and
pleasing an evidence of ownership as though it were
a fence that he himself had built to mark his own.
He stood on the blackened foundation stones of the
burned building, looked down the long avenue of
trees leading toward the road and swore lustily, with
a joy too deep for thankful prayer. These twin lines
of somber trees were his, his the abandoned lawn,
waist high in weeds under white-starred young mag-
nolia trees. The uncultivated fields, studded with tiny
pines and underbrush, that stretched their rolling red-
clay surface away into the distance on four sides be-
longed to Gerald O’Hara–were all his because he had
an unbefuddled Irish head and the courage to stake
everything on a hand of cards.
Gerald closed his eyes and, in the stillness of the un-
worked acres, he felt that he had come home. Here
under his feet would rise a house of whitewashed
brick.
Across the road would be new rail fences,
inclosing fat cattle and blooded horses, and the red
earth that rolled down the hillside to the rich river
bottom land would gleam white as eiderdown in the
95


PART ONE
sun–cotton, acres and acres of cotton! The fortunes of
the O’Haras would rise again.
With his own small stake, what he could borrow
from his unenthusiastic brothers and a neat sum from
mortgaging the land, Gerald bought his first field
hands and came to Tara to live in bachelor solitude
in the four-room overseer’s house, till such a time as
the white walls of Tara should rise.
He cleared the fields and planted cotton and bor-
rowed more money from James and Andrew to buy
more slaves. The O’Haras were a clannish tribe, cling-
ing to one another in prosperity as well as in adver-
sity, not for any overweening family affection but be-
cause they had learned through grim years that to
survive a family must present an unbroken front to
the world. They lent Gerald the money and, in the
years that followed, the money came back to them
with interest. Gradually the plantation widened out,
as Gerald bought more acres lying near him, and in
time the white house became a reality instead of a
dream.
It was built by slave labor, a clumsy sprawling
building that crowned the rise of ground overlook-
ing the green incline of pasture land running down
to the river; and it pleased Gerald greatly, for, even
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PART ONE
when new, it wore a look of mellowed years. The old
oaks, which had seen Indians pass under their limbs,
hugged the house closely with their great trunks and
towered their branches over the roof in dense shade.
The lawn, reclaimed from weeds, grew thick with
clover and Bermuda grass, and Gerald saw to it that
it was well kept. From the avenue of cedars to the
row of white cabins in the slave quarters, there was
an air of solidness, of stability and permanence about
Tara, and whenever Gerald galloped around the bend
in the road and saw his own roof rising through green
branches, his heart swelled with pride as though each
sight of it were the first sight.
He had done it all, little, hard-headed, blustering
Gerald.
Gerald was on excellent terms with all his neighbors
in the County, except the MacIntoshes whose land ad-
joined his on the left and the Slatterys whose meager
three acres stretched on his right along the swamp
bottoms between the river and John Wilkes’ planta-
tion.
The MacIntoshes were Scotch-Irish and Orangemen
and, had they possessed all the saintly qualities of the
Catholic calendar, this ancestry would have damned
them forever in Gerald’s eyes. True, they had lived in
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PART ONE
Georgia for seventy years and, before that, had spent
a generation in the Carolinas; but the first of the fam-
ily who set foot on American shores had come from
Ulster, and that was enough for Gerald.
They were a close-mouthed and stiff-necked family,
who kept strictly to themselves and intermarried with
their Carolina relatives, and Gerald was not alone in
disliking them, for the County people were neigh-
borly and sociable and none too tolerant of anyone
lacking in those same qualities. Rumors of Abolition-
ist sympathies did not enhance the popularity of the
MacIntoshes.
Old Angus had never manumitted a
single slave and had committed the unpardonable so-
cial breach of selling some of his negroes to passing
slave traders en route to the cane fields of Louisiana,
but the rumors persisted.
“He’s an Abolitionist, no doubt,” observed Gerald
to John Wilkes. “But, in an Orangeman, when a prin-
ciple comes up against Scotch tightness, the principle
fares ill.”
The Slatterys were another affair. Being poor white,
they were not even accorded the grudging respect
that Angus MacIntosh’s dour independence wrung
from neighboring families. Old Slattery, who clung
persistently to his few acres, in spite of repeated
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PART ONE
offers from Gerald and John Wilkes, was shiftless
and whining. His wife was a snarly-haired woman,
sickly and washed-out of appearance, the mother of a
brood of sullen and rabbity-looking children– a brood
which was increased regularly every year. Tom Slat-
tery owned no slaves, and he and his two oldest
boys spasmodically worked their few acres of cot-
ton, while the wife and younger children tended what
was supposed to be a vegetable garden. But, some-
how, the cotton always failed, and the garden, due
to Mrs. Slattery’s constant childbearing, seldom fur-
nished enough to feed her flock.
The sight of Tom Slattery dawdling on his neigh-
bors’ porches, begging cotton seed for planting or a
side of bacon to “tide him over,” was a familiar one.
Slattery hated his neighbors with what little energy
he possessed, sensing their contempt beneath their
courtesy, and especially did he hate “rich folks’ up-
pity niggers.” The house negroes of the County con-
sidered themselves superior to white trash, and their
unconcealed scorn stung him, while their more se-
cure position in life stirred his envy. By contrast with
his own miserable existence, they were well-fed, well-
clothed and looked after in sickness and old age. They
were proud of the good names of their owners and,
for the most part, proud to belong to people who were
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PART ONE
quality, while he was despised by all.
Tom Slattery could have sold his farm for three
times its value to any of the planters in the County.
They would have considered it money well spent to
rid the community of an eyesore, but he was well sat-
isfied to remain and to subsist miserably on the pro-
ceeds of a bale of cotton a year and the charity of his
neighbors.
With all the rest of the County, Gerald was on
terms of amity and some intimacy. The Wilkeses, the
Calverts, the Tarletons, the Fontaines, all smiled when
the small figure on the big white horse galloped up
their driveways, smiled and signaled for tall glasses
in which a pony of Bourbon had been poured over a
teaspoon of sugar and a sprig of crushed mint. Ger-
ald was likable, and the neighbors learned in time
what the children, negroes and dogs discovered at
first sight, that a kind heart, a ready and sympathetic
ear and an open pocketbook lurked just behind his
bawling voice and his truculent manner.
His arrival was always amid a bedlam of hounds
barking and small black children shouting as they
raced to meet him, quarreling for the privilege of
holding his horse and squirming and grinning under
his good-natured insults. The white children clam-
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ored to sit on his knee and be trotted, while he de-
nounced to their elders the infamy of Yankee politi-
cians; the daughters of his friends took him into their
confidence about their love affairs, and the youths
of the neighborhood, fearful of confessing debts of
honor upon the carpets of their fathers, found him a
friend in need.
“So, you’ve been owning this for a month, you
young rascal!” he would shout. “And, in God’s name,
why haven’t you been asking me for the money be-
fore this?”
His rough manner of speech was too well known to
give offense, and it only made the young men grin
sheepishly and reply: “Well, sir, I hated to trouble
you, and my father–”
“Your father’s a good man, and no denying it, but
strict, and so take this and let’s be hearing no more of
it.”
The planters’ ladies were the last to capitulate. But,
when Mrs. Wilkes, “a great lady and with a rare gift
for silence,” as Gerald characterized her, told her hus-
band one evening, after Gerald’s horse had pounded
down the driveway. “He has a rough tongue, but he
is a gentleman,” Gerald had definitely arrived.
He did not know that he had taken nearly ten years
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to arrive, for it never occurred to him that his neigh-
bors had eyed him askance at first. In his own mind,
there had never been any doubt that he belonged,
from the moment he first set foot on Tara.
When Gerald was forty-three, so thickset of body
and florid of face that he looked like a hunting squire
out of a sporting print, it came to him that Tara, dear
though it was, and the County folk, with their open
hearts and open houses, were not enough. He wanted
a wife.
Tara cried out for a mistress. The fat cook, a yard
negro elevated by necessity to the kitchen, never had
the meals on time, and the chambermaid, formerly a
field hand, let dust accumulate on the furniture and
never seemed to have clean linen on hand, so that the
arrival of guests was always the occasion of much stir-
ring and to-do. Pork, the only trained house negro on
the place, had general supervision over the other ser-
vants, but even he had grown slack and careless after
several years of exposure to Gerald’s happy-go-lucky
mode of living. As valet, he kept Gerald’s bedroom
in order, and, as butler, he served the meals with dig-
nity and style, but otherwise he pretty well let matters
follow their own course.
With unerring African instinct, the negroes had all
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discovered that Gerald had a loud bark and no bite
at all, and they took shameless advantage of him.
The air was always thick with threats of selling slaves
south and of direful whippings, but there never had
been a slave sold from Tara and only one whipping,
and that administered for not grooming down Ger-
ald’s pet horse after a long day’s hunting.
Gerald’s sharp blue eyes noticed how efficiently his
neighbors’ houses were run and with what ease the
smooth-haired wives in rustling skirts managed their
servants.
He had no knowledge of the dawn-till-
midnight activities of these women, chained to super-
vision of cooking, nursing, sewing and laundering.
He only saw the outward results, and those results
impressed him.
The urgent need of a wife became clear to him one
morning when he was dressing to ride to town for
Court Day.
Pork brought forth his favorite ruffled
shirt, so inexpertly mended by the chambermaid as
to be unwearable by anyone except his valet.
“Mist’ Gerald,” said Pork, gratefully rolling up the
shirt as Gerald fumed, “whut you needs is a wife, and
a wife whut has got plen’y of house niggers.”
Gerald upbraided Pork for his impertinence, but he
knew that he was right. He wanted a wife and he
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wanted children and, if he did not acquire them soon,
it would be too late. But he was not going to marry
just anyone, as Mr. Calvert had done, taking to wife
the Yankee governess of his motherless children. His
wife must be a lady and a lady of blood, with as many
airs and graces as Mrs. Wilkes and the ability to man-
age Tara as well as Mrs. Wilkes ordered her own do-
main.
But there were two difficulties in the way of mar-
riage into the County families.
The first was the
scarcity of girls of marriageable age.
The second,
and more serious one, was that Gerald was a “new
man,” despite his nearly ten years’ residence, and a
foreigner. No one knew anything about his family.
While the society of up-country Georgia was not so
impregnable as that of the Coast aristocrats, no family
wanted a daughter to wed a man about whose grand-
father nothing was known.
Gerald knew that despite the genuine liking of
the County men with whom he hunted, drank and
talked politics there was hardly one whose daugh-
ter he could marry. And he did not intend to have
it gossiped about over supper tables that this, that or
the other father had regretfully refused to let Gerald
O’Hara pay court to his daughter. This knowledge
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did not make Gerald feel inferior to his neighbors.
Nothing could ever make Gerald feel that he was in-
ferior in any way to anyone. It was merely a quaint
custom of the County that daughters only married
into families who had lived in the South much longer
than twenty-two years, had owned land and slaves
and been addicted only to the fashionable vices dur-
ing that time.
“Pack up. We’re going to Savannah,” he told Pork.
“And if I hear you say ‘Whist!’ or ‘Faith!’ but once, it’s
selling you I’ll be doing, for they are words I seldom
say meself.”
James and Andrew might have some advice to offer
on this subject of marriage, and there might be daugh-
ters among their old friends who would both meet his
requirements and find him acceptable as a husband.
James and Andrew listened to his story patiently but
they gave him little encouragement. They had no Sa-
vannah relatives to whom they might look for assis-
tance, for they had been married when they came to
America. And the daughters of their old friends had
long since married and were raising small children of
their own.
“You’re not a rich man and you haven’t a great fam-
ily,” said James.
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PART ONE
“I’ve made me money and I can make a great family.
And I won’t be marrying just anyone.”
“You fly high,” observed Andrew, dryly.
But they did their best for Gerald. James and An-
drew were old men and they stood well in Savannah.
They had many friends, and for a month they carried
Gerald from home to home, to suppers, dances and
picnics.
“There’s only one who takes me eye,” Gerald said
finally. “And she not even born when I landed here.”
“And who is it takes your eye?”
“Miss Ellen Robillard,” said Gerald, trying to speak
casually, for the slightly tilting dark eyes of Ellen Ro-
billard had taken more than his eye. Despite a mysti-
fying listlessness of manner, so strange in a girl of fif-
teen, she charmed him. Moreover, there was a haunt-
ing look of despair about her that went to his heart
and made him more gentle with her than he had ever
been with any person in all the world.
“And you old enough to be her father!”
“And me in me prime!” cried Gerald stung.
James spoke gently.
“Jerry, there’s no girl in Savannah you’d have less
chance of marrying. Her father is a Robillard, and
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PART ONE
those French are proud as Lucifer. And her mother–
God rest her soul–was a very great lady.”
“I care not,” said Gerald heatedly.
“Besides, her
mother is dead, and old man Robillard likes me.”
“As a man, yes, but as a son-in-law, no.”
“The girl wouldn’t have you anyway,” interposed
Andrew. “She’s been in love with that wild buck of
a cousin of hers, Philippe Robillard, for a year now,
despite her family being at her morning and night to
give him up.”
“He’s been gone to Louisiana this month now,” said
Gerald.
“And how do you know?”
“I know,” answered Gerald, who did not care to dis-
close that Pork had supplied this valuable bit of infor-
mation, or that Philippe had departed for the West at
the express desire of his family. “And I do not think
she’s been so much in love with him that she won’t
forget him. Fifteen is too young to know much about
love.”
“They’d rather have that breakneck cousin for her
than you.”
So, James and Andrew were as startled as anyone
when the news came out that the daughter of Pierre
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PART ONE
Robillard was to marry the little Irishman from up the
country. Savannah buzzed behind its doors and spec-
ulated about Philippe Robillard, who had gone West,
but the gossiping brought no answer. Why the loveli-
est of the Robillard daughters should marry a loud-
voiced, red-faced little man who came hardly up to
her ears remained a mystery to all.
Gerald himself never quite knew how it all came
about. He only knew that a miracle had happened.
And, for once in his life, he was utterly humble when
Ellen, very white but very calm, put a light hand on
his arm and said: “I will marry you, Mr. O’Hara.”
The thunderstruck Robillards knew the answer in
part, but only Ellen and her mammy ever knew the
whole story of the night when the girl sobbed till the
dawn like a broken-hearted child and rose up in the
morning a woman with her mind made up.
With foreboding, Mammy had brought her young
mistress a small package, addressed in a strange hand
from New Orleans, a package containing a miniature
of Ellen, which she flung to the floor with a cry, four
letters in her own handwriting to Philippe Robillard,
and a brief letter from a New Orleans priest, announc-
ing the death of her cousin in a barroom brawl.
“They drove him away, Father and Pauline and Eu-
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PART ONE
lalie. They drove him away. I hate them. I hate them
all. I never want to see them again. I want to get away.
I will go away where I’ll never see them again, or this
town, or anyone who reminds me of–of– him.”
And when the night was nearly spent, Mammy, who
had cried herself out over her mistress’ dark head,
protested, “But, honey, you kain do dat!”
“I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into
the convent at Charleston.”
It was the threat of the convent that finally won the
assent of bewildered and heartstricken Pierre Robil-
lard. He was staunchly Presbyterian, even though his
family were Catholic, and the thought of his daughter
becoming a nun was even worse than that of her mar-
rying Gerald O’Hara. After all, the man had nothing
against him but a lack of family.
So, Ellen, no longer Robillard, turned her back on
Savannah, never to see it again, and with a middle-
aged husband, Mammy, and twenty “house niggers”
journeyed toward Tara.
The next year, their first child was born and they
named her Katie Scarlett, after Gerald’s mother. Ger-
ald was disappointed, for he had wanted a son, but
he nevertheless was pleased enough over his small
black-haired daughter to serve rum to every slave at
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PART ONE
Tara and to get roaringly, happily drunk himself.
If Ellen had ever regretted her sudden decision to
marry him, no one ever knew it, certainly not Ger-
ald, who almost burst with pride whenever he looked
at her. She had put Savannah and its memories be-
hind her when she left that gently mannered city by
the sea, and, from the moment of her arrival in the
County, north Georgia was her home.
When she departed from her father’s house forever,
she had left a home whose lines were as beautiful and
flowing as a woman’s body, as a ship in full sail; a pale
pink stucco house built in the French colonial style,
set high from the ground in a dainty manner, ap-
proached by swirling stairs, banistered with wrought
iron as delicate as lace; a dim, rich house, gracious but
aloof.
She had left not only that graceful dwelling but also
the entire civilization that was behind the building
of it, and she found herself in a world that was as
strange and different as if she had crossed a continent.
Here in north Georgia was a rugged section held
by a hardy people.
High up on the plateau at the
foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, she saw rolling red
hills wherever she looked, with huge outcroppings
of the underlying granite and gaunt pines towering
110