Gone With the Wind (109 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I haven’t done so bad,” she thought, lifting her chin and smiling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I am the Resurrection and the Life … and whosoever … believeth in Me shall never die.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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