"Yes, folks are pretty riled up about her. Everybody I run into this afternoon in Jonesboro was promisin' to cut her dead the next time they seen her, but maybe they'll get over it. Now, promise me you won't light into her. I won't be havin' no quarrelin' tonight with Mr. O'Hara layin'
dead in the parlor."
He won't be having any quarreling! thought Scarlett, indignantly. He talks like Tara was
his already!
And then she thought of Gerald, dead in the parlor, and suddenly she began to cry, cry in bitter, gulping sobs. Will put his arm around her, drew her comfortably close and said nothing.
As they jolted slowly down the darkening road, her head on his shoulder, her bonnet
askew, she had forgotten the Gerald of the last two years, the vague old gentleman who stared at doors waiting for a woman who would never enter. She was remembering the vital, virile old man with his mane of crisp white hair, his bellowing cheerfulness, his stamping boots, his clumsy jokes, his generosity. She remembered how, as a child, he had seemed the most wonderful man in the world, this blustering father who carried her before him on his saddle when he jumped fences, turned her up and paddled her when she was naughty, and then cried when she cried and gave her quarters to get her to hush. She remembered him coming home from Charleston and Atlanta
laden with gifts that were never appropriate, remembered too, with a faint smile through tears, how he came home in the wee hours from Court Day at Jonesboro, drunk as seven earls, jumping fences, his rollicking voice raised in "The Wearin' o' the Green." And how abashed he was, facing Ellen on the morning after. Well, he was with Ellen now.
"Why didn't you write me that he was ill? I'd have come so fast--"
"He warn't ill, not a minute. Here, honey, take my handkerchief and I'll tell you all about it."
She blew her nose on his bandanna, for she had come from Atlanta without even a
handkerchief, and settled back into the crook of Will's arm. How nice Will was. Nothing ever upset him.
"Well, it was this way, Scarlett. You been sendin' us money right along and Ashley and me, well, we've paid taxes and bought the mule and seeds and what-all and a few hogs and
chickens. Miss Melly's done mighty well with the hens, yes sir, she has. She's a fine woman, Miss Melly is. Well, anyway, after we bought things for Tara, there warn't so much left over for folderols, but none of us warn't complainin'. Except Suellen.
"Miss Melanie and Miss Carreen stay at home and wear their old clothes like they're
proud of them but you know Suellen, Scarlett. She hasn't never got used to doin' without. It used to stick in her craw that she had to wear old dresses every time I took her into Jonesboro or over to Fayetteville. 'Specially as some of those Carpetbaggers' ladi-women was always flouncin'
around in fancy trimmin's. The wives of those damn Yankees that run the Freedmen's Bureau, do they dress up! Well, it's kind of been a point of honor with the ladies of the County to wear their worst-lookin' dresses to town, just to show how they didn't care and was proud to wear them. But not Suellen. And she wanted a hone and carriage too. She pointed out that you had one."
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.