第8章

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 dueling pistols, pocket derringers, double-barreled hunting 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 Tony Fontaine had shot Brent. The twins had been at home, freshly expelled from the University of Virginia, 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 rifles 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 huccome 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 ter blame fer it all. Ef y’all doan tek me ter Mist’ Wynder’s, Ah’ll lay out in de woods all night an’ maybe de patterollers git me, ‘cause Ah heap ruther de patterollers 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? Nawsuh, 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 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 ...”

CHAPTER II

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 bewilderment 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 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. Scarlett 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.