“Will you wait for me, Miss Scarlett?It—it would be Heaven just knowing that you were waiting for me until after we licked them!”He hung breathless on her words, watching the way her lips curled up at the corners, noting for the first time the shadows about these corners and thinking what it would mean to kiss them. Her hand, with palm clammy with perspiration, slid into his.
“I wouldn't want to wait,”she said and her eyes were veiled.
He sat clutching her hand, his mouth wide open. Watching him from underher lashes, Scarlett thought detachedly that he looked like a gigged frog.He stuttered several times, closed his mouth and opened it again, and again became geranium colored.
“Can you possibly love me?”
She said nothing but looked down into her lap, and Charles was thrown into new states of ecstasy and embarrassment. Perhaps a man should not ask a girl such a question.Perhaps it would be unmaidenly for her to answer it.Having never possessed the courage to get himself into such a situation before, Charles was at a loss as to how to act.He wanted to shout and to sing and to kiss her and to caper about the lawn and then run tell everyone, black and white, that she loved him.But he only squeezed her hand until he drove her rings into the flesh.
“You will marry me soon, Miss Scarlett?”
“Um,”she said, fingering a fold of her dress.
“Shall we make it a double wedding with Mel—”
“No,”she said quickly, her eyes glinting up at him ominously. Charles knew again that he had made an error.Of course, a girl wanted her own wedding—not shared glory.How kind she was to overlook his blunderings.If it were only dark and he had the courage of shadows and could kiss her hand and say the things he longed to say.
“When may I speak to your father?”
“The sooner the better,”she said, hoping that perhaps he would release the crushing pressure on her rings before she had to ask him to do it.
He leaped up and for a moment she thought he was going to cut a caper, before dignity claimed him. He looked down at her radiantly, his whole clean simple heart in his eyes.She had never had anyone look at her thus before and would never have it from any other man, but in her queer detachment she only thought that he looked like a calf.
“I'll go now and find your father,”he said, smiling all over his face.“I can't wait. Will you excuse me—dear?”The endearment came hard but having said it once, he repeated it again with pleasure.
“Yes,”she said,“I'll wait here. It's so cool and nice here.”
He went off across the lawn and disappeared around the house, and shewas alone under the rustling oak. From the stables, men were streaming out on horseback, negro servants riding hard behind their masters.The Munroe boys tore past waving their hats, and the Fontaines and Calverts went down the road yelling.The four Tarletons charged across the lawn by her and Brent shouted:“Mother's going to give us the horses!Yee-aay-ee!”Turf flew and they were gone, leaving her alone again.
The white house reared its tall columns before her, seeming to withdraw with dignified aloofness from her. It would never be her house now.Ashley would never carry her over the threshold as his bride.Oh, Ashley, Ashley!What have I done?Deep in her, under, layers of hurt pride and cold practicality, something stirred hurtingly.An adult emotion was being born, stronger than her vanity or her willful selfishness.She loved Ashley and she knew she loved him and she had never cared so much as in that instant when she saw Charles disappearing around the curved graveled walk.
Chapter 7
Within two weeks Scarlett had become a wife, and within two monthsmore she was a widow. She was soon released from the bonds she had assumed with so much haste and so little thought, but she was never again to know the careless freedom of her unmarried days.Widowhood had crowded closely on the heels of marriage but, to her dismay, motherhood soon followed.
In after years when she thought of those last days of April,1861,Scarlett could never quite remember details. Time and events were telescoped, jumbled together like a nightmare that had no reality or reason.Till the day she died there would be blank spots in her memory of those days.Especially vague were her recollections of the time between her acceptance of Charles and her wedding.Two weeks!So short an engagement would have been impossible in times of peace.Then there would have been a decorous interval of a year or at least six months.But the South was aflame with war, events roared along as swiftly as if carried by a mighty wind and the slow tempo of the old days was gone.Ellen had wrung her hands and counseled delay, in order that Scarlett might think the matter over at greater length.But to her pleadings, Scarlett turned a sullen face and a deaf ear.Marry she would!And quickly too.Within two weeks.
Learning that Ashley's wedding had been moved up from the autumn to the first of May, so he could leave with the Troop as soon as it was called into service, Scarlett set the date of her wedding for the day before his. Ellen protested but Charles pleaded with new-found eloquence, for he was impatient to be off to South Carolina to join Wade Hampton's Legion, and Gerald sided with the two young people.He was excited by the war fever and pleased that Scarlett had made so good a match, and who was he to stand in the way of young love when there was a war?Ellen, distracted, finally gave in as othermothers throughout the South were doing.Their leisured word had been turned topsy-turvy, and their pleadings, prayers and advice availed nothing against the powerful forces sweeping them along.