Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром. Маргарет Митчелл

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СКАЧАТЬ boredom was acute. There had been no entertainment or social life in the County ever since the Troop had gone away to war. All of the interesting young men were gone. Only the older men, the cripples and the women were left, and they spent their time knitting and sewing, growing more cotton and corn, raising more hogs and sheep and cows for the army. There was never a sight of a real man except when the commissary troop under Frank Kennedy rode by every month to collect supplies. But it didn’t help her situation. She was a widow and her heart was in the grave. At least, everyone thought it was in the grave and expected her to act accordingly. This irritated her for she could recall nothing about Charles except the look on his face when she told him she would marry him. And even that picture was fading. But she was a widow and she had to watch her behavior. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls.

      A widow had to wear black dresses, no flower or ribbon or lace or even jewelry. And the black veil on her bonnet had to reach to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length. Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud. Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile. And, most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. Oh, yes, thought Scarlett, some widows do remarry eventually, when they are old. And then it’s to some old widower with a large plantation and a dozen children.

      Marriage was bad enough, but to be widowed – oh, then life was over forever!

      Every morning she woke up and for a moment she was Scarlett O’Hara again and the sun was bright in the magnolia outside her window and the birds were singing and the sweet smell of frying bacon was coming to her nostrils. She was carefree and young again. But that moment passed very fast.

      And Ashley! Oh, most of all Ashley! For the first time in her life, she hated Tara. Every foot of ground, every tree, every path reminded her of him. He belonged to another woman and he had gone to the war, but his ghost still haunted the roads, still smiled at her in the shadows of the porch. And every time she heard the sound of hooves coming up the river road from Twelve Oaks she did think – Ashley!

      She hated Twelve Oaks now and once she had loved it. She hated it but she was drawn there, so she could hear John Wilkes and the girls talk about him – hear them read his letters from Virginia. They hurt her but she had to hear them. She disliked his sisters, but she could not stay away from them. And every time she came home from Twelve Oaks, she lay down on her bed and refused to get up for supper.

      It was this refusal of food that worried Ellen, but Scarlett had no appetite. When Dr. Fontaine told Ellen that heartbreak frequently led to a decline and death, Ellen went white.

      “Isn’t there anything to be done, Doctor?”

      “A change of scene will be the best thing in the world for her,” said the doctor.

      So Scarlett, unenthusiastic, went off first to visit her O’Hara and Robillard relatives in Savannah and then to Ellen’s sisters, Pauline and Eulalie, in Charleston. But she was back at Tara a month before Ellen expected her, with no explanation of her return.

      Ellen, busy night and day, was terrified when her eldest daughter came home from Charleston thin, white and sharp tongued. She had known heartbreak herself, and night after night she lay beside the snoring Gerald, trying to think of some way to lessen Scarlett’s distress. Charles’ aunt, Miss Pittypat Hamilton, had written her several times, asking her to permit Scarlett to come to Atlanta for a long visit, and now for the first time Ellen considered it seriously.

      She and Melanie were alone in a big house “and without male protection,” wrote Miss Pittypat, “now that dear Charlie has gone. Of course, there is my brother Henry but he does not make his home with us. Melly and I would feel much easier and safer if Scarlett were with us. Three lonely women are better than two. And perhaps dear Scarlett could find some outlet for her sorrow, as Melly is doing, by nursing our brave boys in the hospitals here.”

      So Scarlett’s trunk was packed again with her mourning clothes and off she went to Atlanta. She did not especially want to go to Atlanta. She thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and the very idea of living under the same roof with Ashley’s wife was awful. But the County with its memories was impossible now, and any change was welcome.

      Part two

      Chapter VIII

      As the train carried Scarlett northward that May morning in 1862, she remembered what Gerald had told her when she was a child. The fact was that she and Atlanta were christened in the same year. It had had different names before, and not until the year of Scarlett’s birth had it become Atlanta.

      When Gerald first moved to north Georgia, there had been no Atlanta at all, not even a village. But the next year, in 1836, the State had authorized the building of a railroad through the territory which the Cherokees[26] had recently left.

      The people who settled the town were a pushy people. Restless, energetic people from Georgia and more distant states were drawn to this town by the railroads. They came with enthusiasm. They built their stores around the muddy red roads. They built their fine homes where Indian feet had beaten a path[27]called the Peachtree Trail. They were proud of the place, proud of its growth, proud of themselves for making it grow.

      Scarlett stood on the lower step of the train, a pale pretty figure in her black mourning dress. She hesitated, unwilling to soil her slippers, and looked about for Miss Pittypat. There was no sign of her, but soon Scarlett saw an old negro, who came toward her through the mud, his hat in his hand.

      “Dis Miss Scarlett, ain’ it? Dis hyah Peter, Miss Pitty’s coachman. Doan step down in dat mud,” he ordered, as Scarlett gathered up her skirts. “Lemme cahy you.”

      He picked Scarlett up with ease. As he was carrying her toward the carriage, she recalled what Charles had said about Uncle Peter: “He went through all the Mexican campaigns with Father, nursed him when he was wounded – in fact, he saved his life. Uncle Peter practically raised Melanie and me, for we were very young when Father and Mother died. He was the one who decided I should have a larger allowance when I was fifteen, and he insisted that I should go to Harvard. He’s the smartest old darky I’ve ever seen and about the most devoted.”

      When Uncle Peter finally maneuvered the carriage out of the mudholes and onto Peachtree Street, she noticed how the town had grown in a year! It did not seem possible that the little Atlanta she knew could have changed so much.

      For the past year, Atlanta had been transformed. It was humming like a beehive, proudly conscious of its importance to the Confederacy. There were factories turning out machinery to manufacture war materials. There were strange faces on the streets of Atlanta now. One could hear foreign tongues of Europeans who had run the blockade[28] to have made pistols, rifles, cannon and powder for the Confederacy. Trains roared in and out of the town at all hours.

      Here along Peachtree Street and near-by streets were the headquarters of the various army departments, each office swarming with uniformed men. Scarlett felt that Atlanta must be a city of the wounded, for there were general hospitals without number. And every day the trains brought more sick and more wounded.

      There was an exciting atmosphere about the place that uplifted her. It was as if she could actually feel the pulse of the town’s heart beating in time with her own.

      The sidewalks were crowded with men in uniform; the narrow street was jammed with vehicles – carriages, buggies, ambulances; convalescents limped about on crutches; and Scarlett had her first sight of Yankee uniforms, as Uncle Peter pointed to a detachment of bluecoats going СКАЧАТЬ