But they did their best for Gerald. James and Andrew were old men and they stood well in
Savannah. They had many friends, and for a month they carried Gerald from home to home, to suppers, dances and picnics.
"There's only one who takes me eye," Gerald said finally. "And she not even born when I landed here."
"And who is it takes your eye?"
"Miss Ellen Robillard," said Gerald, trying to speak casually, for the slightly tilting dark eyes of Ellen Robillard had taken more than his eye. Despite a mystifying listlessness of manner, so strange in a girl of fifteen, she charmed him. Moreover, there was a haunting look of despair about her that went to his heart and made him more gentle with her than he had ever been with any person in all the world.
"And you old enough to be her father!"
"And me in me prime!" cried Gerald stung.
James spoke gently.
"Jerry, there's no girl in Savannah you'd have less chance of marrying. Her father is a Robillard, and those French are proud as Lucifer. And her mother--God rest her soul--was a very great lady."
"I care not," said Gerald heatedly. "Besides, her mother is dead, and old man Robillard likes me."
"As a man, yes, but as a son-in-law, no."
"The girl wouldn't have you anyway," interposed Andrew. "She's been in love with that wild buck of a cousin of hers, Philippe Robillard, for a year now, despite her family being at her morning and night to give him up."
"He's been gone to Louisiana this month now," said Gerald.
"And how do you know?"
"I know," answered Gerald, who did not care to disclose that Pork had supplied this valuable bit of information, or that Philippe had departed for the West at the express desire of his family. "And I do not think she's been so much in love with him that she won't forget him. Fifteen is too young to know much about love."
"They'd rather have that breakneck cousin for her than you."
So, James and Andrew were as startled as anyone when the news came out that the
daughter of Pierre Robillard was to marry the little Irishman from up the country. Savannah buzzed behind its doors and speculated about Philippe Robillard, who had gone West, but the gossiping brought no answer. Why the loveliest of the Robillard daughters should marry a loud-voiced, red-faced little man who came hardly up to her ears remained a mystery to all.
Gerald himself never quite knew how it all came about. He only knew that a miracle had
happened. And, for once in his life, he was utterly humble when Ellen, very white but very calm, put a light hand on his arm and said: "I will marry you, Mr. O'Hara."
The thunderstruck Robillards knew the answer in part, but only Ellen and her mammy
ever knew the whole story of the night when the girl sobbed till the dawn like a broken-hearted child and rose up in the morning a woman with her mind made up.
With foreboding, Mammy had brought her young mistress a small package, addressed in a
strange hand from New Orleans, a package containing a miniature of Ellen, which she flung to the floor with a cry, four letters in her own handwriting to Philippe Robillard, and a brief letter from a New Orleans priest, announcing the death of her cousin in a barroom brawl.
"They drove him away. Father and Pauline and Eulalie. They drove him away. I hate
them. I hate them all. I never want to see them again. I want to get away. I will go away where I'll never see them again, or this town, or anyone who reminds me of--of--him."
And when the night was nearly spent, Mammy, who had cried herself out over her
mistress' dark head, protested, "But, honey, you kain do dat!"
"I will do it. He is a kind man. I will do it or go into the convent at Charleston."
It was the threat of the convent that finally won the assent of bewildered and heart—
stricken Pierre Robillard. He was staunchly Presbyterian, even though his family were Catholic, and the thought of his daughter becoming a nun was even worse than that of her marrying Gerald O'Hara. After all, the man had nothing against him but a lack of family.
So, Ellen, no longer Robillard, turned her back on Savannah, never to see it again, and
with a middle-aged husband, Mammy, and twenty "house niggers" journeyed toward Tara.
The next year, their first child was born and they named her Katie Scarlett, after Gerald's mother. Gerald was disappointed, for he had wanted a son, but he nevertheless was pleased enough over his small black-haired daughter to serve rum to every slave at Tara and to get roaringly, happily drunk himself.