SCARLETT O’HARA WAS not beautiful, but men
seldom realizedit when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her
facewere too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a
Coastaristocrat of French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid
Irishfather. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw.
Her eyes were pale green without a touch of
hazel, starred with bristlyblack lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above
them, her thickblack brows slanted upward, cutting a startling oblique line in
hermagnolia-white skin—that skin so prized by Southern women and
socarefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgiasuns.
Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the
cool shade of theporch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April
afternoonof 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslindress
spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops andexactly matched
the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father hadrecently brought her from
Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection theseventeen-inch waist, the smallest
in three counties, and the tightlyfitting basque showed breasts well matured
for her sixteen years. Butfor all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the
demureness of hairnetted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small
white handsfolded in her lap, her true self was poorly concealed. The green
eyesin the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with
life,distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners hadbeen
imposed upon her by her mother’s gentle admonitions and thesterner
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 theylaughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and
thick withsaddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet
twoinches tall, long of bone and hard of muscle, with sunburned faces anddeep
auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothedin identical
blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were asmuch alike as two bolls of
cotton.
Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down
in the yard, throwinginto gleaming brightness the dogwood trees that were solid
massesof white blossoms against the background of new green. The twins’horses were hitched in the driveway,
big animals, red as their masters’hair; and around the horses’ legs quarreled the pack of lean,
nervouspossum hounds that accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever theywent. A
little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spottedcarriage dog, muzzle
on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to gohome to supper.
Between the hounds and the horses and the
twins there was akinship deeper than that of their constant companionship. They
wereall healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited,the
boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome anddangerous but,
withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how tohandle them.
Although born to the ease of plantation life,
waited on hand andfoot since infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were
neitherslack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of country peoplewho
have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their headsvery little with
dull things in books. Life in the north Georgia countyof Clayton was still new
and, according to the standards of Augusta,Savannah and Charleston, a little crude.
The more sedate and oldersections of the South looked down their noses at the
up-countryGeorgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of
classicaleducation carried no shame, provided a man was smart in the thingsthat
mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight,dancing
lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying one’sliquor like a gentleman were the
things that mattered.
In these accomplishments the twins excelled,
and they wereequally outstanding in their notorious inability to learn
anythingcontained between the covers of books. Their family had more money,more
horses, more slaves than any one else in the County, but theboys had less
grammar than most of their poor Cracker neighbors.
It was for this precise reason that Stuart
and Brent were idling onthe porch of Tara this April afternoon. They had just
been expelledfrom the University of Georgia, the fourth university that had
thrownthem out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, hadcome home
with them, because they refused to remain at an institutionwhere the twins were
not welcome. Stuart and Brent consideredtheir latest expulsion a fine joke, and
Scarlett, who had not willinglyopened a book since leaving the Fayetteville
Female Academy theyear before, thought it just as amusing as they did.
“I know you two don’t care about being expelled, or
Tomeither,” she said. “But what about Boyd? He’s kind of set on gettingan
education, and you two have pulled him out of the University ofVirginia and
Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. He’llnever get finished at this rate.”
“Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalee’s office over inFayetteville,” answered Brent carelessly. “Besides, it don’t mattermuch. We’d have had to come home before the
term was outanyway.”
“Why?”
“The war, goose! The war’s going to start any day, and you
don’tsuppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, doyou?”
“You know there isn’t going to be any war,” said Scarlett, bored.
“It’s all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his
father told Pa just lastweek that our commissioners in Washington would come to—to—an—amicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln
about the Confederacy.
And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us
to fight. There won’tbe any war, and I’m tired of hearing about it.”
“Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly, as
thoughthey had been defrauded.
“Why, honey, of course there’s going to be a war,” said Stuart.
“The Yankees may be scared of us, but after the way GeneralBeauregard
shelled them out of Fort Sumter day before yesterday,they’ll have to fight or stand branded as
cowards before the wholeworld. Why, the Confederacy—”
Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience.
“If you say ‘war’ just once more, I’ll go in the house and shut thedoor.
I’ve never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as ‘war,’unless it’s ‘secession.’ Pa talks war morning, noon and
night, andall the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter
andStates’ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could
scream!
And that’s all the boys talk about, too, that
and their old Troop. Therehasn’t been any fun at any party this spring
because the boys can’ttalk about anything else. I’m mighty glad Georgia waited till
afterChristmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmasparties,
too. If you say ‘war’ again, I’ll go in the house.”
She meant what she said, for she could never
long endure anyconversation of which she was not the chief subject. But she
smiledwhen she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and flutteringher
bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies’ wings. The boyswere enchanted, as
she had intended them to be, and they hastenedto apologize for boring her. They
thought none the less of her for herlack of interest. Indeed, they thought
more. War was men’s business,not ladies’, and they took her attitude as
evidence of her femininity.
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