Gone With the Wind (13 page)

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

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

Cloaking her triumph, Mammy set down the tray.

“Whut mah lamb gwine wear?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Try a hot cake,” said Mammy inexorably.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mammy snorted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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