It’s not a carriage, it’s an old buggy,” said Scarlett indignantly.
“Well, no matter what. I might as well tell you Suellen never has got over your marryin’ Frank Kennedy and I don’t know as I blame her. You know that was a kind of scurvy trick to play on a sister.”
Scarlett rose from his shoulder, furious as a rattler ready to strike.
“Scurvy trick, hey? I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Win Benteen! Could I help it if he preferred me to her?”
“You’re a smart girl, Scarlett, and I figger, yes, you could have helped him preferrin’ you. Girls always can. But I guess you kind of coaxed him. You’re a mighty takin’ person when you want to be, but all the same, he was Suellen’s beau. Why, she’d had a letter from him a week before you went to Atlanta and he was sweet as sugar about her and talked about how they’d get married when he got a little more money ahead. I know because she showed me the letter.”
Scarlett was silent because she knew he was telling the truth and she could think of nothing to say. She had never expected Will, of all people, to sit in judgment on her. Moreover the lie she had told Frank had never weighed heavily upon her conscience. If a girl couldn’t keep a beau, she deserved to lose him.
“Now, Will, don’t be mean,” she said. “If Suellen had married him, do you think she’d ever have spent a penny on Tara or any of us?”
“I said you could be right takin’ when you wanted to,” said Will, turning to her with a quiet grin. “No, I don’t think we’d ever seen a penny of old Frank’s money. But still there’s no gettin’ ‘round it, it was a scurvy trick and if you want to justify the end by the means, it’s none of my business and who am I to complain? But just the same Suellen has been like a hornet ever since. I don’t think she cared much about old Frank but it kind of teched her vanity and she’s been sayin’ as how you had good clothes and a carriage and lived in Atlanta while she was buried here at Tara. She does love to go callin’ and to parties, you know, and wear pretty clothes. I ain’t blamin’ her. Women are like that.
“Well, about a month ago I took her into Jonesboro and left her to go callin’ while I tended to business and when I took her home, she was still as a mouse but I could see she was so excited she was ready to bust. I thought she’d found out somebody was goin’ to have a—that she’d heard some gossip that was interestin’, and I didn’t pay her much mind. She went around home for about a week all swelled up and excited and didn’t have much to say. She went over to see Miss Cathleen Calvert—Scarlett, you’d cry your eyes out at Miss Cathleen. Pore girl, she’d better be dead than married to that pusillanimous Yankee Hilton. You knew he’d mortaged the place and lost it and they’re goin’ to have to leave?”
“No, I didn’t know and I don’t want to know. I want to know about Pa.”
“Well, I’m gettin’ to that,” said Will patiently. “When she come back from over there she said we’d all misjudged Hilton, She called him Mr. Hilton and she said he was a smart man, but we just laughed at her. Then she took to takin’ your pa out to walk in the afternoons and lots of times when I was comin’ home from the field, I’d see her sittin’ with him on the wall ‘round the buryin’ ground, talkin’ at him hard and wavin’ her hands. And the old gentleman would just look at her sort of puzzled-like and shake his head. You know how he’s been, Scarlett. He just got kind of vaguer and vaguer, like he didn’t hardly know where he was or who we were. One time, I seen her point to your ma’s grave and the old gentleman begun to cry. And when she come in the house all happy and excited lookin’, I gave her a talkin’ to, right sharp, too, and I said: ‘Miss Suellen, why in hell are you devilin’ your poor pa and bringin’ up your ma to him? Most of the time he don’t realize she’s dead and here you are rubbin’ it in.’ And she just kind of tossed her head and laughed and said: ‘Mind your business. Some day you’ll be glad of what I’m doin’.’ Miss Melanie told me last night that Suellen had told her about her schemes but Miss Melly said she didn’t have no notion Suellen was serious. She said she didn’t tell none of us because she was so upset at the very idea.”
“What idea? Are you ever going to get to the point? We’re halfway home now. I want to know about Pa.”
“I’m trying to tell you,” said Will, “and we’re so near home, I guess I’d better stop right here till I’ve finished.”
He drew rein and the horse stopped and snorted. They had halted by the wild overgrown mock-orange hedge that marked the Macintosh property. Glancing under the dark trees Scarlett could just discern the tall ghostly chimneys still rearing above the silent ruin. She wished that Will had chosen any other place to stop.
“Well, the long and the short of her idea was to make the Yankees pay for the cotton they burned and the stock they drove off and the fences and the barns they tore down.”
“The Yankees?”
“Haven’t you heard about it? The Yankee government’s been payin’ claims on all destroyed property of Union sympathizers in the South.”
“Of course I’ve heard about that,” said Scarlett “But what’s that got to do with us?”
“A heap, in Suellen’s opinion. That day I took her to Jonesboro, she run into Mrs. Macintosh and when they were gossipin’ along, Suellen couldn’t help noticin’ what fine-lookin’ clothes Mrs. Macintosh had on and she couldn’t help askin’ about them. Then Mrs. Macintosh gave herself a lot of airs and said as how her husband had put in a claim with the Federal government for destroyin’ the property of a loyal Union sympathizer who had never given aid and comfort to the Confederacy in any shape or form.”
“They never gave aid and comfort to anybody,” snapped Scarlett. “Scotch-Irish!”
“Well, maybe that’s true. I don’t know them. Anyway, the government gave them, well—I forget how many thousand dollars. A right smart sum it was, though. That started Suellen. She thought about it all week and didn’t say nothin’ to us because she knew we’d just laugh. But she just had to talk to somebody so she went over to Miss Cathleen’s and that damned white trash, Hilton, gave her a passel of new ideas. He pointed out that your pa warn’t even born in this country, that he hadn’t fought in the war and hadn’t had no sons to fight, and hadn’t never held no office under the Confederacy. He said they could strain a point about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union sympathizer. He filled her up with such truck and she come home and begun workin’ on Mr. O’Hara. Scarlett, I bet my life your pa didn’t even know half the time what she was talkin’ about. That was what she was countin’ on, that he would take the Iron Clad oath and not even know it.”
“Pa take the Iron Clad oath!” cried Scarlett.
“Well, he’d gotten right feeble in his mind these last months and I guess she was countin’ on that. Mind you, none of us sospicioned nothin’ about it. We knew she was cookin’ up somethin’, but we didn’t know she was usin’ your dead ma to reproach him for his daughters bein’ in rags when he could get a hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of the Yankees.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” murmured Scarlett, her horror at the oath fading.
What a lot of money that was! And to be had for the mere signing of an oath of allegiance to the United States government, an oath stating that the signer had always supported the government and never given aid and comfort to its enemies. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars! That much money for that small a lie! Well, she couldn’t blame Suellen. Good heavens! Was that what Alex meant by wanting to rawhide her? What the County meant by intending to cut her? Fools, every one of them. What couldn’t she do with that much money! What couldn’t any of the folks in the County do with it! And what did so small a lie matter? After all, anything you could get out of the Yankees was fair money, no matter how you got it.
“Yesterday, about noon when Ashley and me were splittin’ rails, Suellen got this wagon and got your pa in it and off they went to town without a word to anybody. Miss Melly had a notion what it was all about but she was prayin’ somethin’ would change Suellen, so she didn’t say nothin’ to the rest of us. She just didn’t see how Suellen could do such a thing.
“Today I heard all about what happened. That pusillanimous fellow, Hilton, had some influence with the other Scalawags and Republicans in town and Suellen had agreed to give them some of the money—I don’t know how much—if they’d kind of wink their eye about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union man and play on how he was an Irishman and didn’t fight in the army and so on, and sign recommendations. All your pa had to do was take the oath and sign the paper and off it would go to Washington.
“They rattled off the oath real fast and he didn’t say nothin’ and it went right well till she got him up to the signin’ of it. And then the old gentleman kind of come to himself for a minute and shook his head. I don’t think he knew what it was all about but he didn’t like it and Suellen always did rub him the wrong way. Well, that just about gave her the nervous fits after all the trouble she’d gone to. She took him out of the office and rode him up and down the road and talked to him about your ma cryin’ out of her grave at him for lettin’ her children suffer when he could provide for them. They tell me your pa sat there in the wagon and cried like a baby, like he always does when he hears her name. Everybody in town saw them and Alex Fontaine went over to see what was the matter, but Suellen gave him the rough side of her tongue and told him to mind his own business, so he went off mad.
“I don’t know where she got the notion but some time in the afternoon she got a bottle of brandy and took Mr. O’Hara back to the office and begun pourin’ it for him. Scarlett, we haven’t had no spirits ‘round Tara for a year, just a little blackberry wine and scuppernong wine Dilcey makes, and Mr. O’Hara warn’t used to it. He got real drunk, and after Suellen had argued and nagged a couple of hours he gave in and said Yes, he’d sign anything she wanted. They got the oath out again and just as he was about to put pen to paper, Suellen made her mistake. She said: ‘Well, now. I guess the Slatterys and the Macintoshes won’t be givin’ themselves airs over us!’ You see, Scarlett, the Slatterys had put in a claim for a big amount for that little shack of theirs that the Yankees burned and Emmie’s husband had got it through Washington for them.
“They tell me that when Suellen said those names, your pa kind of straightened up and squared his shoulders and looked at her, sharp-like. He warn’t vague no more and he said: ‘Have the Slatterys and the Macintoshes signed somethin’ like this?’ and Suellen got nervous and said Yes and No and stuttered and he shouted right loud: Tell me, did that God-damned Orangeman and that God-damned poor white sign somethin’ like this?’ And that feller Hilton spoke up smooth-like and said: ‘Yes sir, they did and they got a pile of money like you’ll get.’
“And then the old gentleman let out a roar like a bull. Alex Fontaine said he heard him from down the street at the saloon. And he said with a brogue you could cut with a butterknife: ‘And were ye afther thinkin’ an O’Hara of Tara would be follyin’ the dirthy thracks of a God-damned Orangeman and a God-damned poor white?’ And he tore the paper in two and threw it in Suellen’s face and he bellowed: ‘Ye’re no daughter of mine!’ and he was out of the office before you could say Jack Robinson.
“Alex said he saw him come out on the street, chargin’ like a bull. He said the old gentleman looked like his old self for the first time since your ma died. Said he was reelin’ drunk and cussin’ at the top of his lungs. Alex said he never heard such fine cussin’. Alex’s horse was standin’ there and your pa climbed on it without a by-your-leave and off he went in a cloud of dust so thick it choked you, cussin’ every breath he drew.
“Well, about sundown Ashley and me were sittin’ on the front step, lookin’ down the road and ‘mighty worried. Miss Melly was upstairs cryin’ on her bed and wouldn’t tell us nothin’. Terrectly, we heard a poundin’ down the road and somebody yellin’ like they was fox huntin’ and Ashley said: That’s queer! That sounds like Mr. O’Hara when he used to ride over to see us before the war.’
“And then we seen him way down at the end of the pasture. He must have jumped the fence right over there. And he come ridin’ hell-for-leather up the hill, singin’ at the top of his voice like he didn’t have a care in the world. I didn’t know your pa had such a voice. He was singin’ ‘Peg in a Low-backed Car’ and beatin’ the horse with his hat and the horse was goin’ like mad. He didn’t draw rein when he come near the top and we seen he was goin’ to jump the pasture fence and we hopped up, scared to death, and then he yelled: ‘Look, Ellen! Watch me take this one!’ But the horse stopped right on his haunches at the fence and wouldn’t take the jump and your pa went right over his head. He didn’t suffer none. He was dead time we got to him. I guess it broke his neck.”
Will waited a minute for her to speak and when she did not he picked up the reins. “Giddap, Sherman,” he said, and the horse started on toward home.
CHAPTER XL
SCARLETT SLEPT little that night. When the dawn had come and the sun was creeping over the black pines on the hills to the east, she rose from her tumbled bed and, seating herself on a stool by the window, laid her tired head on her arm and looked out over the barn yard and orchard of Tara toward the cotton fields. Everything was fresh and dewy and silent and green and the sight of the cotton fields brought a measure of balm and comfort to her sore heart. Tara, at sunrise, looked loved, well tended and at peace, for all that its master lay dead. The squatty log chicken house was clay daubed against rats weasels and clean with whitewash, and so was the log stable. The garden with its rows of corn, bright-yellow squash, butter beans and turnips was well weeded and neatly fenced with split-oak rails. The orchard was cleared of underbrush and only daisies grew beneath the long rows of trees. The sun picked out with faint glistening the apples and the furred pink peaches half hidden in the green leaves. Beyond lay the curving rows of cotton, still and green under the gold of the new sky. The ducks and chickens were waddling and strutting off toward the fields, for under the bushes in the soft plowed earth were found the choicest worms and slugs.
Scarlett’s heart swelled with affection and gratitude to Will who had done all of this. Even her loyalty to Ashley could not make her believe he had been responsible for much of this well-being, for Tara’s bloom was not the work of a planter-aristocrat, but of the plodding, tireless “small farmer” who loved his land. It was a “two-horse” farm, not the lordly plantation of other days with pastures full of mules and fine horses and cotton and corn stretching as far as eye could see. But what there was of it was good and the acres that were lying fallow could be reclaimed when times grew better, and they would be the more fertile for their rest.
