PART ONE Chapter One
SCARLETT OâHARA 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 skinâthat skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her fatherâs 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 Atlanta. 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 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 manners had been imposed upon her by her motherâs 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 saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical 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 dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green. The twinsâ horses were hitched in the driveway, big animals, red as their mastersâ hair; and around the horsesâ legs 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, patiently 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 constant companionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome 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 Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying oneâs liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in their notorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers 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 refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest 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.
âI know you two donât care about being expelled, or Tom either,â she said. âBut what about Boyd? Heâs kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. Heâll never get finished at this rate.â
âOh, he can read law in Judge Parmaleeâs office over in Fayetteville,â answered Brent carelessly. âBesides, it donât matter much. Weâd have had to come home before the term was out anyway.â
âWhy?â
âThe war, goose! The warâs going to start any day, and you donât suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you?â
âYou know there isnât going to be any war,â said Scarlett, bored. âItâs all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come toâtoâanâamicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us to fight. There wonât be any war, and Iâm tired of hearing about it.â
âNot going to be any war!â cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded.
âWhy, honey, of course thereâs going to be a war,â said Stuart. âThe Yankees may be scared of us, but after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of Fort Sumter day before yesterday, theyâll have to fight or stand branded as cowards before the whole world. Why, the Confederacyââ
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
âIf you say âwarâ just once more, Iâll go in the house and shut the door. Iâve never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as âwar,â unless itâs âsecession.â Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and Statesâ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And thatâs all the boys talk about, too, that and their old Troop. There hasnât been any fun at any party this spring because the boys canât talk about anything else. Iâm mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say âwarâ again, Iâll go in the house.â
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, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterfliesâ 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 interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was menâs business, not ladiesâ, and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity.
Having maneuvered them away from the boring subject of war, she went back with interest to their immediate situation.
âWhat did your mother say about you two being expelled again?â
The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their motherâs conduct three months ago when they had come home, by request, from the University of Virginia.
âWell,â said Stuart, âshe hasnât had a chance to say anything yet. Tom and us left home early this morning before she got up, and Tomâs laying out over at the Fontainesâ while we came over here.â
âDidnât she say anything when you got home last night?â
âWe 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 bruteâheâs a grand horse, Scarlett; you must tell your pa to come over and see him right awayâheâd already bitten a hunk out of his groom on the way down here and heâd trampled two of Maâs darkies who met the train at Jonesboro. And just before we got home, heâd about kicked the stable down and half-killed Strawberry, Maâs 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 ainât nobody like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us she said: âIn Heavenâs name, what are you four doing home again? Youâre worse than the plagues of Egypt!â And then the horse began snorting and rearing and she said: âGet out of here! Canât you see heâs nervous, the big darling? Iâll tend to you four in the morning!â So we went to bed, and this morning we got away before she could catch us and left Boyd to handle her.â
âDo you suppose sheâll hit Boyd?â 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 hundred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse-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 didnât do the boys any harm.
âOf course she wonât hit Boyd. She never did beat Boyd much because heâs the oldest and besides heâs the runt of the litter,â said Stuart, proud of his six feet two. âThatâs why we left him at home to explain things to her. Godâlmighty, Ma ought to stop licking us! Weâre nineteen and Tomâs twenty-one, and she acts like weâre six years old.â
âWill your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes barbecue tomorrow?â
âShe wants to, but Pa says heâs too dangerous. And, anyway, the girls wonât let her. They said they were going to have her go to one party at least like a lady, riding in the carriage.â
âI hope it doesnât rain tomorrow,â said Scarlett. âItâs rained nearly every day for a week. Thereâs nothing worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.â
âOh, itâll be clear tomorrow and hot as June,â said Stuart. âLook at that sunset. I never saw one redder. You can always tell weather by sunsets.â
They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald OâHaraâs 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 sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting 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 spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking 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.
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, peaceful 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 sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: âBe careful! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.â
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 Scarlettâs mother, Ellen OâHara, as she called to the little black girl who carried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish voice answered âYasâm,â and there were sounds of footsteps going out the back way toward the smokehouse 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.
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 invitation to supper.
âLook, Scarlett. About tomorrow,â said Brent. âJust because weâve been away and didnât know about the barbecue and the ball, thatâs no reason why we shouldnât get plenty of dances tomorrow night. You havenât promised them all, have you?â
âWell, I have! How did I know you all would be home? I couldnât risk being a wallflower just waiting on you two.â
âYou a wallflower!â The boys laughed uproariously.
âLook, honey. Youâve got to give me the first waltz and Stu the last one and youâve got to eat supper with us. Weâll sit on the stair landing like we did at the last ball and get Mammy Jincy to come tell our fortunes again.â
âI donât like Mammy Jincyâs fortunes. You know she said I was going to marry a gentleman with jet-black hair and a long black mustache, and I donât like black-haired gentlemen.â
âYou like âem red-headed, donât you, honey?â grinned Brent. âNow, come on, promise us all the waltzes and the supper.â
âIf youâll promise, weâll tell you a secret,â said Stuart.
âWhat?â cried Scarlett, alert as a child at the word.
âIs it what we heard yesterday in Atlanta, Stu? If it is, you know we promised not to tell.â
âWell, Miss Pitty told us.â
âMiss Who?â
âYou know, Ashley Wilkesâ cousin who lives in Atlanta, Miss Pittypat HamiltonâCharles and Melanie Hamiltonâs aunt.â
âI do, and a sillier old lady I never met in all my life.â
âWell, 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.â
âOh, I know about that,â said Scarlett in disappointment. âThat silly nephew of hers, Charlie Hamilton, and Honey Wilkes. Everybodyâs known for years that theyâd get married some time, even if he did seem kind of lukewarm about it.â
âDo you think heâs silly?â questioned Brent. âLast Christmas you sure let him buzz round you plenty.â
âI couldnât help him buzzing,â Scarlett shrugged negligently. âI think heâs an awful sissy.â
âBesides, it isnât his engagement thatâs going to be announced,â said Stuart triumphantly. âItâs Ashleyâs to Charlieâs sister, Miss Melanie!â
Scarlettâs face did not change but her lips went whiteâlike 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 analytic, took it for granted that she was merely surprised and very interested.
âMiss Pitty told us they hadnât intended announcing it till next year, because Miss Melly hasnât been very well; but with all the war talk going around, everybody in both families thought it would be better to get married real soon. So itâs to be announced tomorrow night at the supper intermission. Now, Scarlett, weâve told you the secret, so youâve got to promise to eat supper with us.â
âOf course I will,â Scarlett said automatically.
âAnd all the waltzes?â
âAll.â
âYouâre sweet! Iâll bet the other boys will be hopping mad.â
âLet âem be mad,â said Brent. âWe two can handle âem. Look, Scarlett. Sit with us at the barbecue in the morning.â
âWhat?â
Stuart repeated his request.
âOf course.â
The twins looked at each other jubilantly but with some surprise. Although they considered themselves Scarlettâs favored suitors, they had never before 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 tomorrowâseats by her at the barbecue, all the waltzes (and theyâd 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, interrupting each other, making jokes and laughing at them, hinting broadly for invitations to supper. Some time had passed before they realized...