Ashley, leaning against the old secretary, knew that the responsibility for preventing trouble lay with him and, knowing the hair-trigger tempers of the County, was at a loss as to how to proceed.
"There's no help for it, Will," he said, rumpling his bright hair. "I can't knock Grandma Fontaine down or old man McRae either, and I can't hold my hand over Mrs. Tarleton's mouth.
And the mildest thing they'll say is that Suellen is a murderess and a traitor and but for her Mr.
O'Hara would still be alive. Damn this custom of speaking over the dead. It's barbarous."
"Look, Ash," said Will slowly. "I ain't aimin' to have nobody say nothin' against Suellen, no matter what they think. You leave it to me. When you've finished with the readin' and the prayin' and you say: 'If anyone would like to say a few words,' you look right at me, so I can speak first."
But Scarlett, watching the pallbearers' difficulty in getting the coffin through the narrow entrance into the burying ground, had no thought of trouble to come after the funeral. She was thinking with a leaden heart that in burying Gerald she was burying one of the last links that joined her to the old days of happiness and irresponsibility.
Finally the pallbearers set the coffin down near the grave and stood clenching and
unclenching their aching fingers. Ashley, Melanie and Will filed into the enclosure and stood behind the O'Hara girls. All the closer neighbors who could crowd in were behind them and the others stood outside the brick wall. Scarlett, really seeing them for the first time, was surprised and touched by the size of the crowd. With transportation so limited it was kind of so many to come. There were fifty or sixty people there, some of them from so far away she wondered how they had heard in time to come. There were whole families from Jonesboro and Fayetteville and Lovejoy and with them a few negro servants. Many small farmers from far across the river were present and Crackers from the backwoods and a scattering of swamp folk. The swamp men were lean bearded giants in homespun, coonskin caps on their heads, their rifles easy in the crooks of their arms, their wads of tobacco stilled in their cheeks. Their women were with them, their bare feet sunk in the soft red earth, their lower lips full of snuff. Their faces beneath their sunbonnets
were sallow and malarial-looking but shining clean and their freshly ironed calicoes glistened with starch.
The near neighbors were there in full force. Grandma Fontaine, withered, wrinkled and
yellow as an old molted bird, was leaning on her cane, and behind her were Sally Munroe
Fontaine and Young Miss Fontaine. They were trying vainly by whispered pleas and jerks at her skirt to make the old lady sit down on the brick wall. Grandma's husband, the Old Doctor, was not there. He had died two months before and much of the bright malicious joy of life had gone from her old eyes. Cathleen Calvert Hilton stood alone as befitted one whose husband had helped bring about the present tragedy, her faded sunbonnet hiding her bowed face. Scarlett saw with amazement that her percale dress had grease spots on it and her hands were freckled and unclean.
There were even black crescents under her fingernails. There was nothing of quality folks about Cathleen now. She looked Cracker, even worse. She looked poor white, shiftless, slovenly, trifling.
"She'll be dipping snuff soon, if she isn't doing it already," thought Scarlett in horror.
"Good Lord! What a comedown!"
She shuddered, turning her eyes from Cathleen as she realized how narrow was the chasm
between quality folk and poor whites.
"There but for a lot of gumption am I," she thought, and pride surged through her as she realized that she and Cathleen had started with the same equipment after the surrender--empty hands and what they had in their heads.
"I haven't done so bad," she thought, lifting her chin and smiling.
But she stopped in mid-smile as she saw the scandalized eyes of Mrs. Tarleton upon her.
Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears and, after giving Scarlett a reproving look, she turned her gaze back to Suellen, a fierce angry gaze that boded ill for her. Behind her and her husband were the four Tarleton girls, their red locks indecorous notes in the solemn occasion, their russet eyes still looking like the eyes of vital young animals, spirited and dangerous.
Feet were stilled, hats were removed, hands folded and skirts rustled into quietness as
Ashley stepped forward with Carreen's worn Book of Devotions in his hand. He stood for a
moment looking down, the sun glittering on his golden head. A deep silence fell on the crowd, so deep that the harsh whisper of the wind in the magnolia leaves came clear to their ears and the far-off repetitious note of a mockingbird sounded unendurably loud and sad. Ashley began to read the prayers and all heads bowed as his resonant, beautifully modulated voice rolled out the brief and dignified words.