Chapter - 4 | Gone with the Wind

THAT NIGHT AT SUPPER, Scarlett went through the motions of presiding
over the table in her mother’s absence, but her mind was in a ferment over
the dreadful news she had heard about Ashley and Melanie. Desperately
she longed for her mother’s return from the Slatterys’, for, without her, she
felt lost and alone. What right had the Slatterys and their everlasting
sickness to take Ellen away from home just at this time when she, Scarlett,
needed her so much?
Throughout the dismal meal, Gerald’s booming voice battered against
her ears until she thought she could endure it no longer. He had forgotten
completely about his conversation with her that afternoon and was
carrying on a monologue about the latest news from Fort Sumter, which he
punctuated by hammering his ﬁst on the table and waving his arms in the
air. Gerald made a habit of dominating the conversation at mealtimes, and
usually, Scarlett, occupied with her own thoughts, scarcely heard him; but
tonight she could not shut out his voice, no matter how much she strained
to listen for the sound of carriage wheels that would herald Ellen’s return.
Of course, she did not intend to tell her mother what was so heavy on
her heart, for Ellen would be shocked and grieved to know that a daughter
of hers wanted a man who was engaged to another girl. But, in the depths
of the ﬁrst tragedy she had ever known, she wanted the very comfort of her
mother’s presence. She always felt secure when Ellen was by her, for there
was nothing so bad that Ellen could not better it, simply by being there.
She rose suddenly from her chair at the sound of creaking wheels in the
driveway and then sank down again as they went on around the house to
the back yard. It could not be Ellen, for she would alight at the front steps.
Then there was an excited babble of negro voices in the darkness of the
yard and high-pitched negro laughter. Looking out the window, Scarlett
saw Pork, who had left the room a moment before, holding high a ﬂaring

pine knot, while indistinguishable ﬁgures descended from a wagon. The
laughter and talking rose and fell in the dark night air, pleasant, homely,
carefree sounds, gutturally soft, musically shrill. Then feet shufﬂed up the
back-porch stairs and into the passageway leading to the main house,
stopping in the hall just outside the dining room. There was a brief interval
of whispering, and Pork entered, his usual dignity gone, his eyes rolling and
his white teeth a-gleam.
“Mist’ Gerald,” he announced, breathing hard, the pride of a bridegroom
all over his shining face, “yo’ new ’oman done come.”
“New woman? I didn’t buy any new woman,” declared Gerald,
pretending to glare.
“Yassah, you did, Mist’ Gerald! Yassah! An’ she out hyah now wantin’
ter speak wid you,” answered Pork, giggling and twisting his hands in
excitement.
“Well, bring in the bride,” said Gerald, and Pork, turning, beckoned into
the hall to his wife, newly arrived from the Wilkes plantation to become a
part of the household of Tara. She entered, and behind her, almost hidden
by her voluminous calico skirts, came her twelve-year-old daughter,
squirming against her mother’s legs.
Dilcey was tall and bore herself erectly. She might have been any age
from thirty to sixty, so unlined was her immobile bronze face. Indian blood
was plain in her features, overbalancing the negroid characteristics. The
red color of her skin, narrow high forehead, prominent cheek bones and
the hawk-bridged nose which ﬂattened at the end above thick negro lips,
all showed the mixture of two races. She was self-possessed and walked
with a dignity that surpassed even Mammy’s, for Mammy had acquired her
dignity and Dilcey’s was in her blood.
When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as most negroes’ and she
chose her words more carefully.
“Good evenin’, young Misses. Mist’ Gerald, I is sorry to ’sturb you, but I
wanted to come here and thank you agin fo’ buyin’ me and my chile. Lots
of gentlemens might a’ bought me but they wouldn’t a’ bought my Prissy,
too, jes’ to keep me frum grivin’ and I thanks you. I’m gwine do my bes’ fo’
you and show you I ain’t forgettin’.”
“Hum—hurrump,” said Gerald, clearing his throat in embarrassment at
being caught openly in an act of kindness.

Dilcey turned to Scarlett and something like a smile wrinkled the
corners of her eyes. “Miss Scarlett, Poke done tole me how you ast Mist’
Gerald to buy me. And so I’m gwine give you my Prissy fo’ yo’ own maid.”
She reached behind her and jerked the little girl forward. She was a
brown little creature, with skinny legs like a bird and a myriad of pigtails
carefully wrapped with twine sticking stifﬂy out from her head. She had
sharp, knowing eyes that missed nothing and a studiedly stupid look on her
face.
“Thank you, Dilcey,” Scarlett replied, “but I’m afraid Mammy will have
something to say about that. She’s been my maid ever since I was born.”
“Mammy gettin’ ole,” said Dilcey, with a calmness that would have
enraged Mammy. “She a good mammy, but you a young lady now and needs
a good maid, and my Prissy been maidin’ fo’ Miss India fo’ a year now. She
kin sew and ﬁx hair good as a grown pusson.”
Prodded by her mother, Prissy bobbed a sudden curtsy and grinned at
Scarlett, who could not help grinning back.
“A sharp little wench,” she thought, and said aloud: “Thank you, Dilcey,
we’ll see about it when Mother comes home.”
“Thank’ee, Ma’m. I gives you good night,” said Dilcey and, turning, left
the room with her child, Pork dancing attendance.
The supper things cleared away, Gerald resumed his oration, but with
little satisfaction to himself and none at all to his audience. His thunderous
predictions of immediate war and his rhetorical questions as to whether the
South would stand for further insults from the Yankees only produced
faintly bored, “Yes, Papas” and “No, Pas.” Carreen, sitting on a hassock
under the big lamp, was deep in the romance of a girl who had taken the
veil after her lover’s death and, with silent tears of enjoyment oozing from
her eyes, was pleasurably picturing herself in a white coif. Suellen,
embroidering on what she gigglingly called her “hope chest,” was
wondering if she could possibly detach Stuart Tarleton from her sister’s side
at the barbecue tomorrow and fascinate him with the sweet womanly
qualities which she possessed and Scarlett did not. And Scarlett was in a
tumult about Ashley.
How could Pa talk on and on about Fort Sumter and the Yankees when
he knew her heart was breaking? As usual in the very young, she marveled

that people could be so selﬁshly oblivious to her pain and the world rock
along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.
Her mind was as if a cyclone had gone through it, and it seemed strange
that the dining room where they sat should be so placid, so unchanged
from what it had always been. The heavy mahogany table and sideboards,
the massive silver, the bright rag rugs on the shining ﬂoor were all in their
accustomed places, just as if nothing had happened. It was a friendly and
comfortable room and, ordinarily, Scarlett loved the quiet hours which the
family spent there after supper; but tonight she hated the sight of it and, if
she had not feared her father’s loudly bawled questions, she would have
slipped away, down the dark hall to Ellen’s little ofﬁce and cried out her
sorrow on the old sofa.
That was the room that Scarlett liked best in all the house. There, Ellen
sat before her tall secretary each morning, keeping the accounts of the
plantation and listening to the reports of Jonas Wilkerson, the overseer.
There also the family idled while Ellen’s quill scratched across her ledgers,
Gerald in the old rocker, the girls on the sagging cushions of the sofa that
was too battered and worn for the front of the house. Scarlett longed to be
there now, alone with Ellen, so she could put her head in her mother’s lap
and cry in peace. Wouldn’t Mother ever come home?
Then, wheels ground sharply on the graveled driveway, and the soft
murmur of Ellen’s voice dismissing the coachman ﬂoated into the room.
The whole group looked up eagerly as she entered rapidly, her hoops
swaying, her face tired and sad. There entered with her the faint fragrance
of lemon verbena sachet, which seemed always to creep from the folds of
her dresses, a fragrance that was always linked in Scarlett’s mind with her
mother. Mammy followed at a few paces, the leather bag in her hand, her
underlip pushed out and her brow lowering. Mammy muttered darkly to
herself as she waddled, taking care that her remarks were pitched too low
to be understood but loud enough to register her unqualiﬁed disapproval.
“I am sorry I am so late,” said Ellen, slipping her plaid shawl from
drooping shoulders and handing it to Scarlett, whose cheek she patted in
passing.
Gerald’s face had brightened as if by magic at her entrance.
“Is the brat baptized?” he questioned.

“Yes, and dead, poor thing,” said Ellen. “I feared Emmie would die, too,
but I think she will live.”
The girls’ faces turned to her, startled and questioning, and Gerald
wagged his head philosophically.
“Well, ’tis better so that the brat is dead, no doubt, poor fatherle—”
“It is late. We had better have prayers now,” interrupted Ellen so
smoothly that, if Scarlett had not known her mother well, the interruption
would have passed unnoticed.
It would be interesting to know who was the father of Emmie Slattery’s
baby, but Scarlett knew she would never learn the truth of the matter if she
waited to hear it from her mother. Scarlett suspected Jonas Wilkerson, for
she had frequently seen him walking down the road with Emmie at
nightfall. Jonas was a Yankee and a bachelor, and the fact that he was an
overseer forever barred him from any contact with the County social life.
There was no family of any standing into which he could marry, no people
with whom he could associate except the Slatterys and riffraff like them.
As he was several cuts above the Slatterys in education, it was only natural
that he should not want to marry Emmie, no matter how often he might
walk with her in the twilight.
Scarlett sighed, for her curiosity was sharp. Things were always
happening under her mother’s eyes which she noticed no more than if they
had not happened at all. Ellen ignored all things contrary to her ideas of
propriety and tried to teach Scarlett to do the same, but with poor success.
Ellen had stepped to the mantel to take her rosary beads from the small
inlaid casket in which they always reposed when Mammy spoke up with
ﬁrmness.
“Miss Ellen, you gwine eat some supper befo’ you does any prayin’.”
“Thank you, Mammy, but I am not hungry.”
“Ah gwine ﬁx yo’ supper mahseff an’ you eats it,” said Mammy, her brow
furrowed with indignation as she started down the hall for the kitchen.
“Poke!” she called, “tell Cookie stir up de ﬁah. Miss Ellen home.”
As the boards shuddered under her weight, the soliloquy she had been
muttering in the front hall grew louder and louder, coming clearly to the
ears of the family in the dining room.
“Ah has said time an’ again, it doan do no good doin’ nuthin’ fer w’ite
trash. Dey is de shiﬂesses, mos’ ungrateful passel of no-counts livin’. An’

Miss Ellen got no bizness weahin’ herseff out waitin’ on folks dat did dey be
wuth shootin’ dey’d have niggers ter wait on dem. An’ Ah has said—”
Her voice trailed off as she went down the long open passageway,
covered only by a roof, that led into the kitchen. Mammy had her own
method of letting her owners know exactly where she stood on all matters.
She knew it was beneath the dignity of quality white folks to pay the
slightest attention to what a darky said when she was just grumbling to
herself. She knew that to uphold this dignity, they must ignore what she
said, even if she stood in the next room and almost shouted. It protected
her from reproof, and it left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to her exact
views on any subject.
Pork entered the room, bearing a plate, silver and a napkin. He was
followed closely by Jack, a black little boy of ten, hastily buttoning a white
linen jacket with one hand and bearing in the other a ﬂy-swisher, made of
thin strips of newspaper tied to a reed longer than he was. Ellen had a
beautiful peacock-feather ﬂy-brusher, but it was used only on very special
occasions and then only after domestic struggle, due to the obstinate
conviction of Pork, Cookie and Mammy that peacock feathers were bad
luck.
Ellen sat down in the chair which Gerald pulled out for her and four
voices attacked her.
“Mother, the lace is loose on my new ball dress and I want to wear it
tomorrow night at Twelve Oaks. Won’t you please ﬁx it?”
“Mother, Scarlett’s new dress is prettier than mine and I look like a
fright in pink. Why can’t she wear my pink and let me wear her green? She
looks all right in pink.”
“Mother, can I stay up for the ball tomorrow night? I’m thirteen now—”
“Mrs. O’Hara, would you believe it—Hush, you girls, before I take me
crop to you! Cade Calvert was in Atlanta this morning and he says—will
you be quiet and let me be hearing me own voice?—and he says it’s all
upset they are there and talking nothing but war, militia drilling, troops
forming. And he says the news from Charleston is that they will be putting
up with no more Yankee insults.”
Ellen’s tired mouth smiled into the tumult as she addressed herself ﬁrst
to her husband, as a wife should.

“If the nice people of Charleston feel that way, I’m sure we will all feel
the same way soon,” she said, for she had a deeply rooted belief that,
excepting only Savannah, most of the gentle blood of the whole continent
could be found in that small seaport city, a belief shared largely by
Charlestonians.
“No, Carreen, next year, dear. Then you can stay up for balls and wear
grown-up dresses, and what a good time my little pink cheeks will have!
Don’t pout, dear. You can go to the barbecue, remember that, and stay up
through supper, but no balls till you are fourteen.
“Give me your gown, Scarlett. I will whip the lace for you after prayers.
“Suellen, I do not like your tone, dear. Your pink gown is lovely and
suitable to your complexion, as Scarlett’s is to hers. But you may wear my
garnet necklace tomorrow night.”
Suellen, behind her mother’s back, wrinkled her nose triumphantly at
Scarlett, who had been planning to beg the necklace for herself. Scarlett
put out her tongue at her. Suellen was an annoying sister with her whining
and selﬁshness, and had it not been for Ellen’s restraining hand, Scarlett
would frequently have boxed her ears.
“Now, Mr. O’Hara, tell me more about what Mr. Calvert said about
Charleston,” said Ellen.
Scarlett knew her mother cared nothing at all about war and politics
and thought them masculine matters about which no lady could
intelligently concern herself. But it gave Gerald pleasure to air his views,
and Ellen was unfailingly thoughtful of her husband’s pleasure.
While Gerald launched forth on his news, Mammy set the plates before
her mistress, golden-topped biscuits, breast of fried chicken and a yellow
yam open and steaming, with melted butter dripping from it. Mammy
pinched small Jack, and he hastened to his business of slowly swishing the
paper ribbons back and forth behind Ellen. Mammy stood beside the table,
watching every forkful that traveled from plate to mouth, as though she
intended to force the food down Ellen’s throat should she see signs of
ﬂagging. Ellen ate diligently, but Scarlett could see that she was too tired to
know what she was eating. Only Mammy’s implacable face forced her to it.
When the dish was empty and Gerald only midway in his remarks on
the thievishness of Yankees who wanted to free darkies and yet offered no
penny to pay for their freedom, Ellen rose.

“We’ll be having prayers?” he questioned, reluctantly.
“Yes. It is so late—why, it is actually ten o’clock,” as the clock with
coughing and tinny thumps marked the hour. “Carreen should have been
asleep long ago. The lamp, please, Pork, and my prayer book, Mammy.”
Prompted by Mammy’s hoarse whisper, Jack set his ﬂy-brush in the
corner and removed the dishes, while Mammy fumbled in the sideboard
drawer for Ellen’s worn prayer book. Pork, tiptoeing, reached the ring in
the chain and drew the lamp slowly down until the table top was brightly
bathed in light and the ceiling receded into shadows. Ellen arranged her
skirts and sank to the ﬂoor on her knees, laying the open prayer book on
the table before her and clasping her hands upon it. Gerald knelt beside
her, and Scarlett and Suellen took their accustomed places on the opposite
side of the table, folding their voluminous petticoats in pads under their
knees, so they would ache less from contact with the hard ﬂoor. Carreen,
who was small for her age, could not kneel comfortably at the table and so
knelt facing a chair, her elbows on the seat. She liked this position, for she
seldom failed to go to sleep during prayers and, in this posture, it escaped
her mother’s notice.
The house servants shufﬂed and rustled in the hall to kneel by the
doorway, Mammy groaning aloud as she sank down, Pork straight as a
ramrod, Rosa and Teena, the maids, graceful in their spreading bright
calicoes, Cookie gaunt and yellow beneath her snowy head rag, and Jack,
stupid with sleep, as far away from Mammy’s pinching ﬁngers as possible.
Their dark eyes gleamed expectantly, for praying with their white folks was
one of the events of the day. The old and colorful phrases of the litany with
its Oriental imagery meant little to them but it satisﬁed something in their
hearts, and they always swayed when they chanted the responses: “Lord,
have mercy on us,” “Christ, have mercy on us.”
Ellen closed her eyes and began praying, her voice rising and falling,
lulling and soothing. Heads bowed in the circle of yellow light as Ellen
thanked God for the health and happiness of her home, her family and her
negroes.
When she had ﬁnished her prayers for those beneath the roof of Tara,
her father, mother, sisters, three dead babies and “all the poor souls in
Purgatory,” she clasped her white beads between long ﬁngers and began the

Rosary. Like the rushing of a soft wind, the responses from black throats
and white throats rolled back:
“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
our death.”
Despite her heartache and the pain of unshed tears, a deep sense of quiet
and peace fell upon Scarlett as it always did at this hour. Some of the
disappointment of the day and dread of the morrow departed from her,
leaving a feeling of hope. It was not the lifting up of her heart to God that
brought this balm, for religion went no more than lip deep with her. It was
the sight of her mother’s serene face upturned to the throne of God and His
saints and angels, praying for blessings on those whom she loved. When
Ellen intervened with Heaven, Scarlett felt certain that Heaven heard.
Ellen ﬁnished and Gerald, who could never ﬁnd his beads at prayer time,
began furtively counting his decade on his ﬁngers. As his voice droned on,
Scarlett’s thoughts strayed, in spite of herself. She knew she should be
examining her conscience. Ellen had taught her that at the end of each day
it was her duty to examine her conscience thoroughly, to admit her
numerous faults and pray to God for forgiveness and strength never to
repeat them. But Scarlett was examining her heart.
She dropped her head upon her folded hands so that her mother could
not see her face, and her thoughts went sadly back to Ashley. How could
he be planning to marry Melanie when he really loved her, Scarlett? And
when he knew how much she loved him? How could he deliberately break
her heart?
Then, suddenly, an idea, shining and new, ﬂashed like a comet through
her brain.
“Why, Ashley hasn’t an idea that I’m in love with him!”
She almost gasped aloud in the shock of its unexpectedness. Her mind
stood still as if paralyzed for a long, breathless instant, and then raced
forward.
“How could he know? I’ve always acted so prissy and ladylike and touch-
me-not around him he probably thinks I don’t care a thing about him
except as a friend. Yes, that’s why he’s never spoken! He thinks his love is
hopeless. And that’s why he’s looked so—”
Her mind went swiftly back to those times when she had caught him
looking at her in that strange manner, when the gray eyes that were such

perfect curtains for his thoughts had been wide and naked and had in them
a look of torment and despair.
“He’s been broken hearted because he thinks I’m in love with Brent or
Stuart or Cade. And probably he thinks that if he can’t have me, he might
as well please his family and marry Melanie. But if he knew I did love him
—”
Her volatile spirits shot up from deepest depression to excited happiness.
This was the answer to Ashley’s reticence, to his strange conduct. He didn’t
know! Her vanity leaped to the aid of her desire to believe, making belief a
certainty. If he knew she loved him, he would hasten to her side. She had
only to—
“Oh!” she thought rapturously, digging her ﬁngers into her lowered
brow. “What a fool I’ve been not to think of this till now! I must think of
some way to let him know. He wouldn’t marry her if he knew I loved him!
How could he?”
With a start, she realized that Gerald had ﬁnished and her mother’s eyes
were on her. Hastily she began her decade, telling off the beads
automatically but with a depth of emotion in her voice that caused
Mammy to open her eyes and shoot a searching glance at her. As she
ﬁnished her prayers and Suellen, then Carreen, began their decades, her
mind was still speeding onward with her entrancing new thought.
Even now, it wasn’t too late! Too often the County had been scandalized
by elopements when one or the other of the participating parties was
practically at the altar with a third. And Ashley’s engagement had not
even been announced yet! Yes, there was plenty of time!
If no love lay between Ashley and Melanie but only a promise given
long ago, then why wasn’t it possible for him to break that promise and
marry her? Surely he would do it, if he knew that she, Scarlett, loved him.
She must ﬁnd some way to let him know. She would ﬁnd some way! And
then—
Scarlett came abruptly out of her dream of delight, for she had neglected
to make the responses and her mother was looking at her reprovingly. As
she resumed the ritual, she opened her eyes brieﬂy and cast a quick glance
around the room. The kneeling ﬁgures, the soft glow of the lamp, the dim
shadows where the negroes swayed, even the familiar objects that had been
so hateful to her sight an hour ago, in an instant took on the color of her

own emotions, and the room seemed once more a lovely place. She would
never forget this moment or this scene!
“Virgin most faithful,” her mother intoned. The Litany of the Virgin was
beginning, and obediently Scarlett responded: “Pray for us,” as Ellen
praised in soft contralto the attributes of the Mother of God.
As always since childhood, this was, for Scarlett, a moment for
adoration of Ellen, rather than the Virgin. Sacrilegious though it might be,
Scarlett always saw through her closed eyes, the upturned face of Ellen and
not the Blessed Virgin, as the ancient phrases were repeated. “Health of the
Sick,” “Seat of Wisdom,” “Refuge of Sinners,” “Mystical Rose”—they were
beautiful words because they were the attributes of Ellen. But tonight,
because of the exaltation of her own spirit, Scarlett found in the whole
ceremonial, the softly spoken words, the murmur of the responses, a
surpassing beauty beyond any that she had ever experienced before. And
her heart went up to God in sincere thankfulness that a pathway for her
feet had been opened—out of her misery and straight to the arms of
Ashley.
When the last “Amen” sounded, they all rose, somewhat stifﬂy, Mammy
being hauled to her feet by the combined efforts of Teena and Rosa. Pork
took a long spiller from the mantelpiece, lit it from the lamp ﬂame and
went into the hall. Opposite the winding stair stood a walnut sideboard,
too large for use in the dining room, bearing on its wide top several lamps
and a long row of candles in candlesticks. Pork lit one lamp and three
candles and, with the pompous dignity of a ﬁrst chamberlain of the royal
bedchamber lighting a king and queen to their rooms, he led the procession
up the stairs, holding the light high above his head. Ellen, on Gerald’s arm,
followed him, and the girls, each taking her own candlestick, mounted
after them.
Scarlett entered her room, set the candle on the tall chest of drawers
and fumbled in the dark closet for the dancing dress that needed stitching.
Throwing it across her arm, she crossed the hall quietly. The door of her
parents’ bedroom was slightly ajar and, before she could knock, Ellen’s
voice, low but stern, came to her ears.
“Mr. O’Hara, you must dismiss Jonas Wilkerson.”
Gerald exploded, “And where will I be getting another overseer who
wouldn’t be cheating me out of me eyeteeth?”

“He must be dismissed, immediately, tomorrow morning. Big Sam is a
good foreman and he can take over the duties until you can hire another
overseer.”
“Ah, ha!” came Gerald’s voice. “So, I understand! Then the worthy
Jonas sired the—”
“He must be dismissed.”
“So, he is the father of Emmie Slattery’s baby,” thought Scarlett. “Oh,
well. What else can you expect from a Yankee man and a white-trash girl?”
Then, after a discreet pause which gave Gerald’s splutterings time to die
away, she knocked on the door and handed the dress to her mother.
By the time Scarlett had undressed and blown out the candle, her plan
for tomorrow had worked itself out in every detail. It was a simple plan, for,
with Gerald’s single-mindedness of purpose, her eyes were centered on the
goal and she thought only of the most direct steps by which to reach it.
First, she would be “prideful,” as Gerald had commanded. From the
moment she arrived at Twelve Oaks, she would be her gayest, most spirited
self. No one would suspect that she had ever been downhearted because of
Ashley and Melanie. And she would ﬂirt with every man there. That
would be cruel to Ashley, but it would make him yearn for her all the more.
She wouldn’t overlook a man of marriageable age, from ginger-whiskered
old Frank Kennedy, who was Suellen’s beau, on down to shy, quiet,
blushing Charles Hamilton, Melanie’s brother. They would swarm around
her like bees around a hive, and certainly Ashley would be drawn from
Melanie to join the circle of her admirers. Then somehow she would
maneuver to get a few minutes alone with him, away from the crowd. She
hoped everything would work out that way, because it would be more
difﬁcult otherwise. But if Ashley didn’t make the ﬁrst move, she would
simply have to do it herself.
When they were ﬁnally alone, he would have fresh in his mind the
picture of the other men thronging about her, he would be newly impressed
with the fact that every one of them wanted her, and that look of sadness
and despair would be in his eyes. Then she would make him happy again by
letting him discover that, popular though she was, she preferred him above
any other man in all the world. And when she admitted it, modestly and
sweetly, she would look a thousand things more. Of course, she would do it
all in a ladylike way. She wouldn’t even dream of saying to him boldly that

she loved him—that would never do. But the manner of telling him was a
detail that troubled her not at all. She had managed such situations before
and she could do it again.
Lying in the bed with the moonlight streaming dimly over her, she
pictured the whole scene in her mind. She saw the look of surprise and
happiness that would come over his face when he realized that she really
loved him, and she heard the words he would say asking her to be his wife.
Naturally, she would have to say then that she simply couldn’t think of
marrying a man when he was engaged to another girl, but he would insist
and ﬁnally she would let herself be persuaded. Then they would decide to
run off to Jonesboro that very afternoon and—
Why, by this time tomorrow night, she might be Mrs. Ashley Wilkes!
She sat up in bed, hugging her knees, and for a long happy moment she
was Mrs. Ashley Wilkes—Ashley’s bride! Then a slight chill entered her
heart. Suppose it didn’t work out this way? Suppose Ashley didn’t beg her
to run away with him? Resolutely she pushed the thought from her mind.
“I won’t think of that now,” she said ﬁrmly. “If I think of it now, it will
upset me. There’s no reason why things won’t come out the way I want
them—if he loves me. And I know he does!”
She raised her chin and her pale, black-fringed eyes sparkled in the
moonlight. Ellen had never told her that desire and attainment were two
different matters; life had not taught her that the race was not to the swift.
She lay in the silvery shadows with courage rising and made the plans that
a sixteen-year-old makes when life has been so pleasant that defeat is an
impossibility and a pretty dress and a clear complexion are weapons to
vanquish fate.