Gone with the Wind by Gone & the Wind
Author:Gone & the Wind
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Adelaide Library
https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/m/mitchell/margaret/gone/chapter31.html
Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
Chapter 32
She was still clutching the ball of red clay when she went up the front steps. She had carefully avoided the back entrance, for Mammyâs sharp eyes would certainly have seen that something was greatly amiss. Scarlett did not want to see Mammy or anyone else. She did not feel that she could endure seeing anyone or talking to anyone again. She had no feeling of shame or disappointment or bitterness now, only a weakness of the knees and a great emptiness of heart. She squeezed the clay so tightly it ran out from her clenched fist and she said over and over, parrot-like: âIâve still got this. Yes, Iâve still got this.â
There was nothing else she did have, nothing but this red land, this land she had been willing to throw away like a torn handkerchief only a few minutes before. Now, it was dear to her again and she wondered dully what madness had possessed her to hold it so lightly. Had Ashley yielded, she could have gone away with him and left family and friends without a backward look but, even in her emptiness, she knew it would have torn her heart to leave these dear red hills and long washed gullies and gaunt black pines. Her thoughts would have turned back to them hungrily until the day she died. Not even Ashley could have filled the empty spaces in her heart where Tara had been uprooted. How wise Ashley was and how well he knew her! He had only to press the damp earth into her hand to bring her to her senses.
She was in the hall preparing to close the door when she heard the sound of horseâs hooves and turned to look down the driveway. To have visitors at this of all times was too much. Sheâd hurry to her room and plead a headache.
But when the carriage came nearer, her flight was checked by her amazement. It was a new carriage, shiny with varnish, and the harness was new too, with bits of polished brass here and there. Strangers, certainly. No one she knew had the money for such a grand new turn-out as this.
She stood in the doorway watching, the cold draft blowing her skirts about her damp ankles. Then the carriage stopped in front of the house and Jonas Wilkerson alighted. Scarlett was so surprised at the sight of their former overseer driving so fine a rig and in so splendid a greatcoat she could not for a moment believe her eyes. Will had told her he looked quite prosperous since he got his new job with the Freedmenâs Bureau. Made a lot of money, Will said, swindling the niggers or the government, one or tuther, or confiscating folksâ cotton and swearing it was Confederate government cotton. Certainly he never came by all that money honestly in these hard times.
And here he was now, stepping out of an elegant carriage and handing down a woman dressed within an inch of her life.
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