Gone With the Wind (110 page)

Will stopped and, turning to Mrs. Tarleton, he said in a lower voice: “I wonder couldn’t you take Scarlett in the house, Ma’m? It ain’t right for her to be standin’ in the sun so long. And Grandma Fontaine don’t look any too peart neither, meanin’ no disrespect,”

Startled at the abrupt switching from the eulogy to herself, Scarlett went red with embarrassment as all eyes turned toward her. Why should Will advertise her already obvious pregnancy? She gave him a shamed indignant look, but Will’s placid gaze bore her down.

“Please,” his look said. “I know what I’m doin’.”

Already he was the man of the house and, not wishing to make a scene, Scarlett turned helplessly to Mrs. Tarleton. That lady, suddenly diverted, as Will had intended, from thoughts of Suellen to the always fascinating matter of breeding, be it animal or human, took Scarlett’s arm.

“Come in the house, honey.”

Her face took on a look of kind, absorbed interest and Scarlett suffered herself to be led through the crowd that gave way and made a narrow path for her. There was a sympathetic murmuring as she passed and several hands went out to pat her comfortingly. When she came abreast Grandma Fontaine, the old lady put out a skinny claw and said: “Give me your arm, child,” and added with a fierce glance at Sally and Young Miss: “No, don’t you come. I don’t want you.”

They passed slowly through the crowd which closed behind them and went up the shady path toward the house, Mrs. Tarleton’s eager helping hand so strong under Scarlett’s elbow that she was almost lifted from the ground at each step.

“Now, why did Will do that?” cried Scarlett heatedly, when they were out of earshot. “He practically said: ‘Look at her! She’s going to have a baby!’ ”

“Well, sake’s alive, you are, aren’t you?” said Mrs. Tarleton. “Will did right It was foolish of you to stand in the hot sun when you might have fainted and had a miscarriage.”

“Will wasn’t bothered about her miscarrying,” said Grandma, a little breathless as she labored across the front yard toward the steps. There was a grim, knowing smile on her face. “Will’s smart. He didn’t want either you or me, Beetrice, at the graveside. He was scared of what we’d say and he knew this was the only way to get rid of us. … And it was more than that. He didn’t want Scarlett to hear the clods dropping on the coffin. And he’s right. Just remember, Scarlett, as long as you don’t hear that sound, folks aren’t actually dead to you. But once you hear it … Well, it’s the most dreadfully final sound in the world. … Help me up the steps, child, and give me a hand, Beetrice. Scarlett don’t any more need your arm than she needs crutches and I’m not so peart, as Will observed. … Will knew you were your father’s pet and he didn’t want to make it worse for you than it already was. He figured it wouldn’t be so bad for your sisters. Suellen has her shame to sustain her and Carreen her God. But you’ve got nothing to sustain you, have you, child?”

“No,” answered Scarlett, helping the old lady up the Steps, faintly surprised at the truth that sounded in the reedy old voice. “I’ve never had anything to sustain me—except Mother.”

“But when you lost her, you found you could stand alone, didn’t you? Well, some folks can’t. Your pa was one. Will’s right. Don’t you grieve. He couldn’t get along without Ellen and he’s happier where he is. Just like I’ll be happier when I join the Old Doctor.”

She spoke without any desire for sympathy and the two gave her none. She spoke as briskly and naturally as if her husband were alive and in Jonesboro and a short buggy ride would bring them together. Grandma was too old and had seen too much to fear death.

“But—you can stand alone too,” said Scarlett.

“Yes, but it’s powerful uncomfortable at times.”

“Look here, Grandma,” interrupted Mrs. Tarleton, “you ought not to talk to Scarlett like that. She’s upset enough already. What with her trip down here and that tight dress and her grief and the heat, she’s got enough to make her miscarry without your adding to it, talking grief and sorrow.”

“God’s nightgown!” cried Scarlett in irritation. I’m not upset! And I’m not one of those sickly miscarrying fools!”

“You never can tell,” said Mrs. Tarleton omnisciently. “I lost my first when I saw a bull gore one of our darkies and—you remember my red mare, Nellie? Now, there was the healthiest-looking mare you ever saw but she was nervous and high strung and if I didn’t watch her, she’d—”

“Beatrice, hush,” said Grandma. “Scarlett wouldn’t miscarry on a bet. Let’s us sit here in the hall where it’s cool. There’s a nice draft through here. Now, you go fetch us a glass of buttermilk, Beetrice, if there’s any in the kitchen. Or look in the pantry and see if there’s any wine. I could do with a glass. We’ll sit here till the folks come up to say good-by.”

“Scarlett ought to be in bed,” insisted Mrs. Tarleton, running her eyes over her with the expert air of one who calculated a pregnancy to the last-minute of its length.

“Get going,” said Grandma, giving her a prod with her cane, and Mrs. Tarleton went toward the kitchen, throwing her hat carelessly on the sideboard and running her hands through her damp red hair.

Scarlett lay back in her chair and unbuttoned the two top buttons of her tight basque, it was cool and dim in the high-ceilinged hall and the vagrant draft that went from back to front of the house was refreshing after the heat of the sun. She looked across the hall into the parlor where Gerald had lain and, wrenching her thoughts from him, looked up at the portrait of Grandma Robillard hanging above the fireplace. The bayonet-scarred portrait with its high-piled hair, half-exposed breasts and cool insolence had, as always, a tonic effect upon her.

“I don’t know which hit Beetrice Tarleton worse, losing her boys or her horses,” said Grandma Fontaine. “She never did pay much mind to Jim or her girls, you know. She’s one of those folks Will was talking about. Her mainspring’s busted. Sometimes I wonder if she won’t go the way your pa went. She wasn’t ever happy unless horses or humans were breeding right in her face and none of her girls are married or got any prospects of catching husbands in this county, so she’s got nothing to occupy her mind. If she wasn’t such a lady at heart, she’d be downright common. … Was Will telling the truth about marrying Suellen?”

“Yes,” said Scarlett, looking the old lady full in the eye. Goodness, she could remember the time when she was scared to death of Grandma Fontaine! Well, she’d grown up since then and she’d just as soon as not tell her to go to the devil if she meddled in affairs at Tara.

“He could do better,” said Grandma candidly.

“Indeed?” said Scarlett haughtily.

“Come off your high horse, Miss,” said the old lady tartly. “I shan’t attack your precious sister, though I might have if I’d stayed at the burying ground. What I mean is with the scarcity of men in the neighborhood, Will could marry most any of the girls. There’s Beatrice’s four wild cats and the Munroe girls and the McRae—”

“He’s going to marry Sue and that’s that.”

“She’s lucky to get him.”

“Tara is lucky to get him.”

“You love this place, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So much that you don’t mind your sister marrying out of her class as long as you have a man around to care for Tara?”

“Class?” said Scarlett, startled at the idea. “Class? What does class matter now, so long as a girl gets a husband who can take care of her?”

“That’s a debatable question,” said Old Miss. “Some folks would say you were talking common sense. Others would say you were letting down bars that ought never be lowered one inch. Will’s certainly not quality folks and some of your people were.”

Her sharp old eyes went to the portrait of Grandma Robillard.

Scarlett thought of Will, lank, unimpressive, mild, eternally chewing a straw, his whole appearance deceptively devoid of energy, like that of most Crackers. He did not have behind him a long line of ancestors of wealth, prominence and blood. The first of Will’s family to set foot on Georgia soil might even have been one of Oglethorpe’s debtors or a bond servant. Will had not been to college. In fact, four years in a backwoods school was all the education he had ever had. He was honest and he was loyal, he was patient and he was hard working, but certainly he was not quality. Undoubtedly by Robillard standards, Suellen was coming down in the world.

“So you approve of Will coming into your family?”

“Yes,” answered Scarlett fiercely, ready to pounce upon the old lady at the first words of condemnation.

“You may kiss me,” said Grandma surprisingly, and she smiled in her most approving manner. “I never liked you much till now, Scarlett. You were always hard as a hickory nut, even as a child, and I don’t like hard females, barring myself. But I do like the way you meet things. You don’t make a fuss about things that can’t be helped, even if they are disagreeable. You take your fences cleanly like a good hunter.”

Scarlett smiled uncertainly and pecked obediently at the withered cheek presented to her. It was pleasant to hear approving words again, even if she had little idea what they meant.

“There’s plenty of folks hereabouts who’ll have something to say about you letting Sue marry a Cracker—for all that everybody likes Will. They’ll say in one breath what a fine man he is and how terrible it is for an O’Hara girl to marry beneath her. But don’t you let it bother you.”

“I’ve never bothered about what people said.”

“So I’ve heard.” There was a hint of acid in the old voice. “Well, don’t bother about what folks say. It’ll probably be a very successful marriage. Of course, Will’s always going to look like a Cracker and marriage won’t improve his grammar any. And, even if he makes a mint of money, he’ll never lend any shine and sparkle to Tara, like your father did. Crackers are short on sparkle. But Will’s a gentleman at heart. He’s got the right instincts. Nobody but a born gentleman could have put his finger on what is wrong with us as accurately as he just did, down there at the burying. The whole world can’t lick us but we can lick ourselves by longing too hard for things we haven’t got any more—and by remembering too much. Yes, Will will do well by Suellen and by Tara.”

“Then you approve of me letting him marry her?”

“God, no!” The old voice was tired and bitter but vigorous. “Approve of Crackers marrying into old families? Bah! Would I approve of breeding scrub stock to thoroughbreds? Oh, Crackers are good and solid and honest but—”

“But you said you thought it would be a successful match!” cried Scarlett bewildered.

“Oh, I think it’s good for Suellen to marry Will—to marry anybody for that matter, because she needs a husband bad. And where else could she get one? And where else could you get as good a manager for Tara? But that doesn’t mean I like the situation any better than you do.”

But I do like it, thought Scarlett trying to grasp the old lady’s meaning. I’m glad Will is going to marry her. Why should she think I minded? She’s taking it for granted that I do mind, just like her.

She felt puzzled and a little ashamed, as always when people attributed to her emotions and motives they possessed and thought she shared.

Grandma fanned herself with her palmetto leaf and went on briskly: “I don’t approve of the match any more than you do but I’m practical and so are you. And when it comes to something that’s unpleasant but can’t be helped, I don’t see any sense in screaming and kicking about it. That’s no way to meet the ups and downs of life. I know because my family and the Old Doctor’s family have had more than our share of ups and downs. And if we folks have a motto, it’s this: ‘Don’t holler—smile and bide your time.’ We’ve survived a passel of things that way, smiling and biding our time, and we’ve gotten to be experts at surviving. We had to be. We’ve always bet on the wrong horses. Run out of France with the Huguenots, run out of England with the Cavaliers, run out of Scotland with Bonnie Prince Charlie, run out of Haiti by the niggers and now licked by the Yankees. But we always turn up on top in a few years. You know why?”

She cocked her head and Scarlett thought she looked like nothing so much as an old, knowing parrot.

“No, I don’t know, I’m sure,” she answered politely. But she was heartily bored, even as she had been the day when Grandma launched on her memories of the Creek uprising.

“Well, this is the reason. We bow to the inevitable. We’re not wheat, we’re buckwheat! When a storm comes along it flattens ripe wheat because it’s dry and can’t bend with the wind. But ripe buckwheat’s got sap in it and it bends. And when the wind has passed, it springs up almost as straight and strong as before. We aren’t a stiff-necked tribe. We’re mighty limber when a hard wind’s blowing, because we know it pays to be limber. When trouble comes we bow to the inevitable without any mouthing, and we work and we smile and we bide our time. And we play along with lesser folks and we take what we can get from them. And when we’re strong enough, we kick the folks whose necks we’ve climbed over. That, my child, is the secret of the survival.” And after a pause, she added: “I pass it on to you.”

The old lady cackled, as if she were amused by her words, despite the venom in them. She looked as if she expected some comment from Scarlett but the words had made little sense to her and she could think of nothing to say.

“No, sir,” Old Miss went on, “our folks get flattened out but they rise up again, and that’s more than I can say for plenty of people not so far away from here. Look at Cathleen Calvert. You can see what she’s come to. Poor white! And a heap lower than the man she married. Look at the McRae family. Flat to the ground, helpless, don’t know what to do, don’t know how to do anything. Won’t even try. They spend their time whining about the good old days. And look at—well, look at nearly anybody in this County except my Alex and my Sally and you and Jim Tarleton and his girls and some others. The rest have gone under because they didn’t have any sap in them, because they didn’t have the gumption to rise up again. There never was anything to those folks but money and darkies, and now that the money and darkies are gone, those folks will be Cracker in another generation.”

“You forgot the Wilkes.”

“No, I didn’t forget them. I just thought I’d be polite and not mention them, seeing that Ashley’s a guest under this roof. But seeing as how you’ve brought up their names—look at them! There’s India who from all I hear is a dried-up old maid already, giving herself all kinds of widowed airs because Stu Tarleton was killed and not making any effort to forget him and try to catch another man. Of course, she’s old but she could catch some widower with a big family if she tried. And poor Honey was always a man-crazy fool with no more sense than a guinea hen. And as for Ashley, look at him!”