舒淇冯德伦分手 星侣分手背后隐情
近日，有传舒淇与冯德伦正式分手，舒淇在Facebook上大发感慨，其中有几句更是撕心裂肺到不行：“承诺就像放屁，当时惊天动地，过后苍白无力。”而最可圈可点的是这句：“现在的我，你爱理不理，记住了，以后的我，你高攀不起!”连放狠话。
1传舒淇冯德伦分手：以后你高攀不起　　近日，有传与冯德伦正式分手，舒淇在Facebook上大发感慨，其中有几句更是撕心裂肺到不行：&承诺就像放屁，当时惊天动地，过后苍白无力。&而最可圈可点的是这句：&现在的我，你爱理不理，记住了，以后的我，你高攀不起!&连放狠话。　　传舒淇冯德伦分手：以后的我你高攀不起　　舒淇与冯德伦1997年拍摄《美少年之恋》开始传出绯闻，但之后恋情各自精采。2012年4月，舒淇遭网友上传陈年艳照而当街痛哭，约冯德伦在中环夜店包房谈心。随后，二人又以情侣装扮现身香港机场，乘班机前往东京，疑旧情复燃。　　有媒体还爆料，舒淇冯德伦分手的导火索是因为在拍摄《太极1：从零开始》时，舒淇竟然当众批评男友的剧本乱，搞到冯德伦很没有面子，双方陷入冷战。恰逢舒淇的前男友黎明，全人类都期待与舒淇复合，舒淇又答得暧昧，令冯德伦不爽，隔三差五的不回舒淇电话。　　舒淇Facebook原文节选：　　看仔细哦!姊妹们　　承诺就像放屁，当时惊天动地，过后苍白无力。　　有些人碰都没碰就爱疯了，而有些人爱都没爱就睡够了。女人如果遇到好男人，一辈子都不需要成熟起来。女人越来越成熟坚强，都是因为她们没有遇上好男人!　　如果你某天拉黑了某人，后来不小心把他放了出来，相信我，你还会再拉黑他第二次的，有些人存在的意义就是为了让别人拉黑。　　不要以为一天到晚笑嘻嘻或者沉默寡言的人好惹，当你撕开他的面具你会连跪下机会都没有!　　犯贱是普遍真理，你我只是其中之一。　　分手背后总有很多隐情，爱得深恨之切，一起来看看这些背后故事。2邱泽唐嫣分手 恋情不再互相指责　　分手 恋情不再互相指责　　分手曝光的导火索被指唐嫣助理&叮当猫糖糖&，怒指邱泽：&怕掉粉丝装孙子不肯公开恋情&。邱泽竟发微博解释：&对我来说，爱情不是表演，原谅我无 法 公诸于世，即便你对于那些美好的曾经没有了任何情份，我依然选择相信那是存在的，关于爱情，我没有对不起任何人。&而在出席活动时，邱泽也亲口承认分手。　　故事并未到此为止，又传出欲追唐嫣的八卦，而唐嫣的助理更爆料，在&泽嫣&恋期间，唐嫣为男友付出很多，甘愿帮他洗厕所，但邱泽对唐嫣的约束却很多，最令人无法忍受的是，他会规定唐嫣每次穿什麽颜色的衣服。　　当然，唐嫣、邱泽的粉丝都为偶像愤愤不平，对掐的趋势，让邱泽不仅删除了微博回应分手的原文，也公开呼吁粉丝：&泽迷们，记得，不要口出恶言。&　　这段恋情并不顺利，邱泽公开怀念旧情人，可实际上，两人当初的关系也不咋样。10多年前，邱泽、杨丞琳都是圈内新人，杨丞琳被疑在与Ben交往时，疑因《》与邱泽假戏真做。而邱泽则被指与友人谈论女方私处，遭男方否认，却同样对杨丞琳有很深的伤害。　　时隔多年，邱泽坦言：&当年没能处理好负面的新闻，我不太会跟人沟通，以致大家误会太多。&邱泽的公开悔悟，似乎为时已晚，毕竟他们都不再是当年的热恋情侣。3黄宗泽与胡杏儿分手 小三找上门　　与分手 小三找上门　　黄宗泽与胡杏儿的绯闻传了六年，两人都未曾公然承认恋情，直到去年胡杏儿勇夺&视后&两人才终于认了相恋的事实。两人自2005年因拍剧相恋后，越来越稳定，两人不时以情侣档上阵吸金，即使往年网传出两人分手，但终极仍然是成功复合。然而经历七年的感情终宣告结束，胡杏儿哭着说自己没有第三者。　　相恋多年的黄宗泽、胡杏儿去年在电视颁奖礼上高调公开恋情，其间更一度传出婚讯。不过，日前两人离奇分手，矛头直指黄宗泽另结新欢。据知一向贪玩的黄宗泽在拍剧时与一内地女演员玩得过火，有自称小三的人竟然找上门，胡杏儿一怒之下宣布分手。　　胡杏儿自从夺得视后之后，与黄宗泽聚少离多。上半年胡杏儿在内地拍摄电视剧《金玉满堂》和《辣妈俏爸》，她回港后，黄宗泽又北上接拍电视剧《面包树上的女人》。两人只是情人节短聚了数天，近半年大部分时间靠电话维系感情。两个月前突然有一个自称是黄宗泽小三的内地女演员找上门，誓要跟胡杏儿摊牌。　　据悉，黄宗泽和胡杏儿连月来为小三上门一事处于冷战中，女方一直谈分手，男方坚持自己没有偷吃，所以不肯就此分手。两人协议给大家时间冷静，之后，黄宗泽便北上拍剧。原定黄宗泽回港后，打算与胡杏儿再谈此事，岂料分手消息外泄，打乱两人阵脚。胡杏儿公开承认分手，黄宗泽无奈下答应，先通知经理人乐易玲。胡杏儿也在公开活动上交代此事，被记者问到是否黄宗泽有第三者时，她一脸有口难言，只哭着回应分手后不可以代对方说话，只说自己没有第三者。而黄宗泽则坚持自己没有第三者，更表示会等杏儿回心转意，同时会用时间来证明自己，似乎要用实际行动证明根本没有小三存在。4韩庚与江铠同分手 逼于粉丝压力　　与分手 逼于粉丝压力　　韩庚与江铠同在被网友拍到两人深夜密会，被证实两人相恋了，而在现在又出现新情况了，因为舆论和粉丝的压力以及两人对待恋情的态度上有矛盾，江铠同已于近日与韩庚分手。而某次《快乐大本营》也有曾被提及变相的证实此事。　　韩庚江铠同的绯闻流传已久，还传闻韩庚为保护恋情韩庚还曾数度与媒体&翻脸&，上演罢录风波。有媒体经过长时间跟拍终于捕捉到两人在一起的画面。据媒体报道，7月23日江铠同回到北京，而这时韩庚正在北京备战演唱会。当晚，韩庚和江铠同在一个火锅店包房吃饭，其间两人亲密交谈。随后一起返回了韩庚的家，恋情正式曝光。随后记者致电江铠同，对恋情曝光，她并没否认，只是客气地表示不想说什么。　　被爆韩庚和江铠同分手后，在某活动中江铠同心情十分低落，全程没有与邻座的李易峰有任何交流，可以看出确实可能是因为失恋而导致心情低潮。根据网友的爆料江铠同与韩庚分手是因为粉丝舆论压力而导致，刚刚前往江铠同微博，她已经将评论关闭。5王志飞张歆艺分手 疑有巨大刺激　　飞分手 疑有巨大刺激　　内地女星张歆艺在微博中公布恋情，称自己终于找到了二姐夫，希望大家给予她祝福。虽然并未指明其男友究竟是谁，不过随后张歆艺转发了绯闻男友杨树鹏的调侃，两人的甜蜜恋情自然不言而喻。　　2012年3月，张歆艺因出演电影《匹夫》而与导演杨树鹏传出恋情，随后又被拍到两人牵手逛超市的照片，更有媒体爆出两人已疑似同居。与张歆艺相恋多年的王志飞则在3月2日正式发表声明，宣布与张歆艺结束恋人关系，并希望不要就私人问题再做纠缠。王志飞身边的好友则透露，分手是张歆艺首先提出来的。王志飞分手之后精神十分萎靡，那么深爱的一个人要不是有巨大的刺激是不会分手的。6贾斯汀-比伯与女友分手 聚少离多　　贾斯汀-比伯与与赛琳娜-分手 聚少离多　　美国歌坛小天王贾斯汀-比伯与其女友赛琳娜-戈麦斯已经分手。随后《人物》杂志确认了该消息。有知情人透露：&赛琳娜和比伯大约一周前就分手了&，而分手的原因则是两人聚少离多，&赛琳娜还不怎么相信比伯&。此外还有消息称，&的秘密&的超模芭芭拉&帕尔文介入两人的，才是他们分手的真正原因。　　比伯与朋友在看演出，其中就包括芭芭拉。贾斯汀&比伯今年才满18岁，但却是美国现在最有人气的歌坛天王之一。赛琳娜&戈麦斯今年20岁，10岁时被迪士尼全球才艺计划挖掘，她不仅唱歌，也出演过《蕾蒙娜和姐姐》等影片，也是在美国年轻人中有极高人气的偶像。比伯和赛琳娜相恋后，于2011年初大方地公开了恋情，并经常在公共场合同进同处，十分甜蜜。今年7月，曾经有两人分手的传言，但在9月又有媒体拍到两人一起游玩的画面。7莱昂纳多与女友分手 都怪他太忙　　莱昂纳多-迪卡普里奥与艾琳-希瑟顿分手 都怪他太忙　　据美国媒体《US Weekly》最新爆料，37岁知名男星莱昂纳多-迪卡普里奥与23岁超模女友艾琳-希瑟顿相恋仅十月，业已正式分手。据知情人爆料，莱昂纳多-迪卡普里奥与的秘密超模艾琳-希瑟顿相恋十个月，最终无缘分手。该知情人向《US Weekly》透露，&他们已分开好几周了，他们之间并没有恶化冷战，只是各自工作实在太忙了，实际上，他们仍然彼此在乎。&俩人在去年十二月相识，当时莱昂纳多与《孩》女星-莱弗利刚刚结束梦幻爱情。不过知情人也否认莱昂纳多与艾琳是因为出现第三者，表示仅因为俩人动作都太忙太少时间见面而导致分手。实际上，莱昂纳多一整年确实拼命般疯狂拍戏，先是在澳大利亚忙着拍摄《了不起的盖茨比》(Great Gatsby)、在新奥尔良洲拍摄《解放的詹哥》，又去了纽约拍摄《华尔街之狼》。据悉，艾琳也并非莱昂纳多首位超模女友，他还曾于年间与超模-邦辰，年间与芭儿-莱法利相继约会过。8王心凌范植伟分手 第一次不是对方　　范植伟分手 第一次不是对方　　&甜蜜教主&王心凌曾经遭&前男友&范植伟无情消遣。两人相恋于王心凌入行前，就当女主角小有名气之时，范植伟却在节目中大谈&前女友&王心凌的私密事。惊爆：&我19岁，她17岁，她的第一次不是给我!&这则有关王心凌的&初夜&报导迅速抢占了当时的娱乐头版。　　事后，范植伟虽然对王心凌深感抱歉，但已经无法弥补两人之间的鸿沟，以及王心凌被消遣的命运，两人至此不相往来。范植伟也因为这桩事件，人气暴跌，来年当街掌掴女模柯佳青，如今眼见在圈内混不下去了。
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关键词：&&&&&&&&&双十一单着也没啥 体坛单身男女莎娃专注做糖
[摘要]双十一，光棍节，体坛明星也有不少单身的人,他们有人因为恋情破裂单着,也有人没遇到合适的宁可等着。莎拉波娃说:“我只是又一次恢复了单身的生活,这没什么,我现在可以专心做我的糖果了。”光棍节,看看体坛单身男女在购物风潮席卷网络内外之前,其实今天是“单身狗”自我调侃造出来的“节日”——四个1,光棍节。现代工作生活压力大,越来越多人宁愿单着,对这样的“节日”也从一笑了之到身处其中,内心多多少少受了点影响。时至今日,单身女性也加入,分享其中心塞。体坛明星也有不少单身的人,他们有人因为恋情破裂单着,也有人没遇到合适的宁可等着。■专题策划:王会进 ■专题撰文:李召 王敌 高京C罗:单身就可以名正言顺约美女是的,C罗还需要一个女人。今年初,C罗一个人参加金球奖颁奖典礼,奖杯终于拿回家了,恋爱五年的超模女友却没了。前不久,C罗对媒体说自己还想要五六个孩子,所以要赶紧找一个理想伴侣。这个理想伴侣曾经是俄罗斯超模伊莲娜,两人刚确定恋爱关系不久,C罗就突然蹦出来一个私生子迷你罗,但这并不妨碍他们成为人人称羡的金童玉女。伊莲娜和C罗一起拍摄的内裤广告更是成为销量保障。人们称赞伊莲娜是拥有让花花公子C罗成为好好先生的魅力。要知道,从模特、艳星到护士、大学生,C罗可谓阅女无数,伊莲娜是此前唯一一个让C罗消停下来的女人。只不过,两人最终没有修成正果。分手后,伊莲娜曾经对纽约媒体暗示,“我理想中的男友需要忠诚,需要可靠,他必须是一名绅士,他应该懂得如何对待女人。我不会信任那些让彼此感到不开心的男人,因为他们只是男孩,而非男人。我一度认为自己找到了心目中的理想男友,不过结果却并不如意。”毫无疑问,C罗钟情的美女一定还要身材火辣。据英国媒体数月前报道,C罗在网络上私约22岁的墨尔本模特艾琳·。艾琳原本是帮男友问问C罗,不料火辣身材让后者心动。据悉C罗先是问艾琳要健身照片。艾琳回答:“不行,我男朋友会不开心的。”C罗却说:“没人会知道的,宝贝,安静。”他还补充道,“我不会给任何人看。”C罗还索要了对方的手机号码,并愿意提供给对方自己球赛的门票。而艾琳询问是否可以带上自己的男友时,C罗当然拒绝了:“我不想认识男人,我只想见你。”还有媒体披露,C罗、和《马卡报》记者曾一起喝咖啡时,正巧一名美女走过,C罗轻推他们说:“看美女。”卡瓦略并没有任何反应,C罗还调侃说:“这家伙就像。”现在C罗这样不也挺好?单身了就可以名正言顺地约美女了。有消息表示,C罗更喜欢单身的生活方式。:伤透心了,不想第二次“小”罗伊斯是足坛著名的单身汉,他的单身理由很简单,因为迟迟无法走出失恋的阴影。出道的罗伊斯,女朋友正是多特蒙德的女队医卡罗琳·博施。在辗转回到多特蒙德之前,罗伊斯并没有如今的名气,卡罗琳始终不离不弃,给了罗伊斯巨大的鼓励和安慰。虽然卡罗琳比罗伊斯矮一头,相貌也只能算是平平,但对罗伊斯来说,卡罗琳几乎就是他的一切,罗伊斯曾说:“不管我多不开心,只要见到卡罗琳就会好。”遗憾的是,罗伊斯在2012年夏天回到多特蒙德后,反倒是和卡罗琳分了手。分手让罗伊斯伤透了心,他还在一次采访中谈道:“当时发誓一辈子不和女人恋爱了。”时间过去差不多三年了,德国媒体始终没有发现罗伊斯有新女友,反倒是经常见到罗伊斯跟一个男人在一起。不过罗伊斯说:“马塞尔只是我的好朋友。”莎娃:单身没啥 现在可以专心做糖果了近日,莎拉波娃表示自己即将出自传,无数“莎米”听说此消息后都不禁感叹:“嗯,情史能写半本书。”像莎拉波娃这样的白富美没道理会一直单身,但事实就是莎娃的恋爱总是一到谈婚论嫁就习惯性格式化,变回单身。最近一次订婚失败是和保加利亚网球选手迪米特洛夫。两人在今年情人节还用婚戒炫耀爱情,但在今年7月,两人却正式宣布分开。而据美国媒体透露,分手是因为迪米特洛夫劈腿布沙尔和小威廉姆斯。不过此说未得到证实。不管怎么说,莎拉波娃又一次恢复了单身,就如同他当年和篮球明星的故事一样。莎拉波娃说:“我只是又一次恢复了单身的生活,这没什么,我现在可以专心做我的糖果了。”据悉,莎拉波娃在和迪米特洛夫分手后向他索要回了一辆价值28万欧元的保时捷跑车。感情没了,账目还要算明白的。王薔:没人愿意跟着我跑中国网球的新一代小花们,最漂亮的当然要算上王薔一个,何况人家名字里本来就有朵蔷薇花。蔷薇花,花语是美好的爱情,不过王薔的爱情还得再等等。“每年在全世界打比赛,谈男朋友比较难,因为在一起的时间太少,也不会有人跟着我长期在外面跑这样。”王薔的答复算得上是标准配置,单身球员们基本上都这样向媒体抱怨。没有男朋友,闲下来的时间王薔干脆找粉丝过。“有没睡的吗?来聊两句”,或者是,“有人传咱俩绯闻,@宁宇清_Chris 小鲜肉你怎么看。”宁宇清是谁?宁宇清比王薔小两岁,是国家队球员,已经拿过三次全国城市运动会男单冠军,还是王薔口中的男神。至于两人是不是真的在恋爱中?宁宇清说:“说(我和王薔)合适的我请吃饭!!!”王薔的回复是:“亲们,他都放话了,剩下的就看你们的了。”虽然是一句玩笑,但好歹宁宇清也是王薔口中的小鲜肉啊!
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Copyright & 1998 - 2017 Tencent. All Rights Reserved王者荣耀：绝版艾琳，有多少人连见都没见过？那艾琳该怎么玩呢？
王者荣耀：绝版艾琳，有多少人连见都没见过？那艾琳该怎么玩呢？
　　当一提到王者荣耀里最稀有的英雄，我们首先想到的都会是只能用点券买的嬴政，钻石夺宝的韩信，点卷夺宝的武则天，这些英雄在王者荣耀中，固然少见，但是有一个英雄比他们更加稀有，甚至很多人都没有见过，她就是艾琳，艾琳是最初内测时期玩家使用的专属英雄，之后就下架再也没有方法可以购买，也没有再出现过任何的活动能够获得艾琳，就连游戏商场，游戏库里都不到艾琳的存在，相信也没有多少人在游戏中见过艾琳。　　艾琳才是王者荣耀中最稀有的英雄，可谓是万中无一，也有一些土豪想尽办法想要得到艾琳，但大多数得到的结果都是，内测专属，无法获得。　　漂亮的艾琳吸引了很多玩家的好奇，但是官方就是不愿意推出艾琳，这也是王者玩家的一大遗憾。　　艾琳的定位是射手，也是团控/先手，她的伤害是最高的，但是生存能力较低，艾琳的技能和后羿的几乎相同，被动技能：迟缓之箭，一技能：炙热之风，二技能：寒冰箭雨，大招：惩戒射击。　　艾琳的技能介绍是主二副一，艾琳和后羿一样，她的技能主要以二技能为主，能够在团战中进行远程消耗，打出高伤害，然后利用一技能进行追杀残血，另外大招是艾琳的必杀技能，是保命和灭残血的绝招。艾琳的速度是一个明显弱点，生存能力也很薄弱，她有控，却没有位移，推荐的召唤师技能是：疾跑，闪现，狂暴。　　艾琳出装分析，前期主要出攻速鞋和末世是性价比非常高的输出装备，大大的增加了攻速和输出。中期就可以出带电刀了，提升自己的带线能力，或者出影刃进一步的提高伤害和移动速度，再出吸血刀提升自己的生存能力。后期主要叠加伤害和出破甲，最大限度的提升自身的伤害，在团战发挥最大得作用，而破甲弓是后期必备的装备，大大的增加伤害。　　艾琳的符文主要是增加攻速和暴击，橙色符文推荐：红月、无双，增加攻速和暴击。蓝色符文推荐：狩猎和隐匿，提高攻速和移速。绿色符文推荐：鹰眼，提高物理攻击和物理穿透。　　开团时，艾琳是主要的输出，强大的艾琳在开团中有些超高的输出，只要把艾琳保护的好，团赢的概率会更高，艾琳的大招是必杀的技能，大招把握好，可以事半功倍，一人左右战局的胜负。
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作者最新文章飘（乱世佳人）：CHAPTER III_飘（乱世佳人）_VOA英语网
飘（乱世佳人）：CHAPTER III
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CHAPTER III
ELLEN O&HARA was thirty-two years old, and, according to the standards of her day, she was a middle-aged woman, one who had borne six children and buried three. She was a tall woman, standing a head higher than her fiery little husband, but she moved with such quiet grace in her swaying hoops that the height attracted no attention to itself. Her neck, rising from the black taffeta sheath of her basque, was creamy-skinned, rounded and slender, and it seemed always tilted slightly backward by the weight of her luxuriant hair in its net at the back of her head. From her French mother, whose parents had fled Haiti in the Revolution of 1791, had come her slanting dark eyes, shadowed by inky lashes, and from her father, a soldier of Napoleon, she had her long straight nose and her square-cut jaw that was softened by the gentle curving of her cheeks. But only from life could Ellen&s face have acquired its look of pride that had no haughtiness, its graciousness, its melancholy and its utter lack of humor.
She would have been a strikingly beautiful woman had there been any glow in her eyes, any responsive warmth in her smile or any spontaneity in her voice that fell with gentle melody on the ears of her family and her servants. She spoke in the soft slurring voice of the coastal Georgian, liquid of vowels, kind to consonants and with the barest trace of French accent. It was a voice never raised in command to a servant or reproof to a child but a voice that was obeyed instantly at Tara, where her husband&s blustering and roaring were quietly disregarded.
As far back as Scarlett could remember, her mother had always been the same, her voice soft and sweet whether in praising or in reproving, her manner efficient and unruffled despite the daily emergencies of Gerald&s turbulent household, her spirit always calm and her back unbowed, even in the deaths of her three baby sons. Scarlett had never seen her mother&s back touch the back of any chair on which she sat. Nor had she ever seen her sit down without a bit of needlework in her hands, except at mealtime, while attending the sick or while working at the bookkeeping of the plantation. It was delicate embroidery if company were present, but at other times her hands were occupied with Gerald&s ruffled shirts, the girls& dresses or garments for the slaves. Scarlett could not imagine her mother&s hands without her gold thimble or her rustling figure unaccompanied by the small negro girl whose sole function in life was to remove basting threads and carry the rosewood sewing box from room to room, as Ellen moved about the house superintending the cooking, the cleaning and the wholesale clothes-making for the plantation.
She had never seen her mother stirred from her austere placidity, nor her personal appointments anything but perfect, no matter what the hour of day or night. When Ellen was dressing for a ball or for guests or even to go to Jonesboro for Court Day, it frequently required two hours, two maids and Mammy to turn her out to
but her swift toilets in times of emergency were amazing.
Scarlett, whose room lay across the hall from her mother&s, knew from babyhood the soft sound of scurrying bare black feet on the hardwood floor in the hours of dawn, the urgent tappings on her mother&s door, and the muffled, frightened negro voices that whispered of sickness and birth and death in the long row of whitewashed cabins in the quarters. As a child, she often had crept to the door and, peeping through the tiniest crack, had seen Ellen emerge from the dark room, where Gerald&s snores were rhythmic and untroubled, into the flickering light of an upheld candle, her medicine case under her arm, her hair smoothed neatly place, and no button on her basque unlooped.
It had always been so soothing to Scarlett to hear her mother whisper, firmly but compassionately, as she tiptoed down the hall: &Hush, not so loudly. You will wake Mr. O&Hara. They are not sick enough to die.&
Yes, it was good to creep back into bed and know that Ellen was abroad in the night and everything was right.
In the mornings, after all-night sessions at births and deaths, when old Dr. Fontaine and young Dr. Fontaine were both out on calls and could not be found to help her, Ellen presided at the breakfast table as usual, her dark eyes circled with weariness but her voice and manner revealing none of the strain. There was a steely quality under her stately gentleness that awed the whole household, Gerald as well as the girls, though he would have died rather than admit it.
Sometimes when Scarlett tiptoed at night to kiss her tall mother&s cheek, she looked up at the mouth with its too short, too tender upper lip, a mouth too easily hurt by the world, and wondered if it had ever curved in silly girlish giggling or whispered secrets through long nights to intimate girl friends. But no, that wasn&t possible. Mother had always been just as she was, a pillar of strength, a fount of wisdom, the one person who knew the answers to everything.
But Scarlett was wrong, for, years before, Ellen Robillard of Savannah had giggled as inexplicably as any fifteen-year-old in that charming coastal city and whispered the long nights through with friends, exchanging confidences, telling all secrets but one. That was the year when Gerald O&Hara, twenty-eight years older than she, came into her life&the year, too, when youth and her black-eyed cousin, Philippe Robillard, went out of it. For when Philippe, with his snapping eyes and his wild ways, left Savannah forever, he took with him the glow that was in Ellen&s heart and left for the bandy-legged little Irishman who married her only a gentle shell.
But that was enough for Gerald, overwhelmed at his unbelievable luck in actually marrying her. And if anything was gone from her, he never missed it. Shrewd man that he was, he knew that it was no less than a miracle that he, an Irishman with nothing of family and wealth to recommend him, should win the daughter of one of the wealthiest and proudest families on the Coast. For Gerald was a self-made man.
Gerald had come to America from Ireland when he was twenty-one. He had come hastily, as many a better and worse Irishman before and since, with the clothes he had on his back, two shillings above his passage money and a price on his head that he felt was larger than his misdeed warranted. There was no Orangeman this side of hell worth a hundred pounds to the British government or
but if the government felt so strongly about the death of an English absentee landlord&s rent agent, it was time for Gerald O&Hara to be leaving and leaving suddenly. True, he had called the rent agent &a bastard of an Orangeman,& but that, according to Gerald&s way of looking at it, did not give the man any right to insult him by whistling the opening bars of &The Boyne Water.&
The Battle of the Boyne had been fought more than a hundred years before, but, to the O&Haras and their neighbors, it might have been yesterday when their hopes and their dreams, as well as their lands and wealth, went off in the same cloud of dust that enveloped a frightened and fleeing Stuart prince, leaving William of Orange and his hated troops with their orange cockades to cut down the Irish adherents of the Stuarts.
For this and other reasons, Gerald&s family was not inclined to view the fatal outcome of this quarrel as anything very serious, except for the fact that it was charged with serious consequences. For years, the O&Haras had been in bad odor with the English constabulary on account of suspected activities against the government, and Gerald was not the first O&Hara to take his foot in his hand and quit Ireland between dawn and morning. His two oldest brothers, James and Andrew, he hardly remembered, save as close-lipped youths who came and went at odd hours of the night on mysterious errands or disappeared for weeks at a time, to their mother&s gnawing anxiety. They had come to America years before, after the discovery of a small arsenal of rifles buried under the O&Hara pigsty. Now they were successful merchants in Savannah, &though the dear God alone knows where that may be,& as their mother always interpolated when mentioning the two oldest of her male brood, and it was to them that young Gerald was sent.
He left home with his mother&s hasty kiss on his cheek and her fervent Catholic blessing in his ears, and his father&s parting admonition, &Remember who ye are and don&t be taking nothing off no man.& His five tall brothers gave him good-by with admiring but slightly patronizing smiles, for Gerald was the baby and the little one of a brawny family.
His five brothers and their father stood six feet and over and broad in proportion, but little Gerald, at twenty-one, knew that five feet four and a half inches was as much as the Lord in His wisdom was going to allow him. It was like Gerald that he never wasted regrets on his lack of height and never found it an obstacle to his acquisition of anything he wanted. Rather, it was Gerald&s compact smallness that made him what he was, for he had learned early that little people must be hardy to survive among large ones. And Gerald was hardy.
His tall brothers were a grim, quiet lot, in whom the family tradition of past glories, lost forever, rankled in unspoken hate and crackled out in bitter humor. Had Gerald been brawny, he would have gone the way of the other O&Haras and moved quietly and darkly among the rebels against the government But Gerald was &loud-mouthed and bullheaded,& as his mother fondly phrased it, hair trigger of temper, quick with his fists and possessed of a chip on his shoulder so large as to be almost visible to the naked eye. He swaggered among the tall O&Haras like a strutting bantam in a barnyard of giant Cochin roosters, and they loved him, baited him affectionately to hear him roar and hammered on him with their large fists no more than was necessary to keep a baby brother in his proper place.
If the educational equipment which Gerald brought to America was scant, he did not even know it. Nor would he have cared if he had been told. His mother had taught him to read and to write a clear hand. He was adept at ciphering. And there his book knowledge stopped. The only Latin he knew was the responses of the Mass and the only history the manifold wrongs of Ireland. He knew no poetry save that of Moore and no music except the songs of Ireland that had come down through the years. While he entertained the liveliest respect for those who had more book learning than he, he never felt his own lack. And what need had he of these things in a new country where the most ignorant of bogtrotters had made great fortunes? in this country which asked only that a man be strong and unafraid of work?
Nor did James and Andrew, who took him into their store in Savannah, regret his lack of education. His clear hand, his accurate figures and his shrewd ability in bargaining won their respect, where a knowledge of literature and a fine appreciation of music, had young Gerald possessed them, would have moved them to snorts of contempt. America, in the early years of the century, had been kind to the Irish. James and Andrew, who had begun by hauling goods in covered wagons from Savannah to Georgia&s inland towns, had prospered into a store of their own, and Gerald prospered with them.
He liked the South, and he soon became, in his own opinion, a Southerner. There was much about the South&and Southerners&that he wo but, with the wholeheartedness that was his nature, he adopted its ideas and customs, as he understood them, for his own&poker and horse racing, red-hot politics and the code duello, States& Rights and damnation to all Yankees, slavery and King Cotton, contempt for white trash and exaggerated courtesy to women. He even learned to chew tobacco. There was no need for him to acquire a good head for whisky, he had been born with one.
But Gerald remained Gerald. His habits of living and his ideas changed, but his manners he would not change, even had he been able to change them. He admired the drawling elegance of the wealthy rice and cotton planters, who rode into Savannah from their moss-hung kingdoms, mounted on thoroughbred horses and followed by the carriages of their equally elegant ladies and the wagons of their slaves. But Gerald could never attain elegance. Their lazy, blurred voices fell pleasantly on his ears, but his own brisk brogue clung to his tongue. He liked the casual grace with which they conducted affairs of importance, risking a fortune, a plantation or a slave on the turn of a card and writing off their losses with careless good humor and no more ado than when they scattered pennies to pickaninnies. But Gerald had known poverty, and he could never learn to lose money with good humor or good grace. They were a pleasant race, these coastal Georgians, with their soft-voiced, quick rages and their charming inconsistencies, and Gerald liked them. But there was a brisk and restless vitality about the young Irishman, fresh from a country where winds blew wet and chill, where misty swamps held no fevers, that set him apart from these indolent gentle-folk of semi-tropical weather and malarial marshes.
From them he learned what he found useful, and the rest he dismissed. He found poker the most useful of all Southern customs, poker and a st and it was his natural aptitude for cards and amber liquor that brought to Gerald two of his three most prized possessions, his valet and his plantation. The other was his wife, and he could only attribute her to the mysterious kindness of God.
The, valet. Pork by name, shining black, dignified and trained in all the arts of sartorial elegance, was the result of an all-night poker game with a planter from St. Simons Island, whose courage in a bluff equaled Gerald&s but whose head for New Orleans rum did not. Though Pork&s former owner later offered to buy him back at twice his value, Gerald obstinately refused, for the possession of his first slave, and that slave the &best damn valet on the Coast,& was the first step upward toward his heart&s desire, Gerald wanted to be a slave owner and a landed gentleman.
His mind was made up that he was not going to spend all of his days, like Tames and Andrew, in bargaining, or all his nights, by candlelight, over long columns of figures. He felt keenly, as his brothers did not, the social stigma attached to those &in trade.& Gerald wanted to be a planter. With the deep hunger of an Irishman who has been a tenant on the lands his people once had owned and hunted, he wanted to see his own acres stretching green before his eyes. With a ruthless singleness of purpose, he desired his own house, his own plantation, his own horse, his own slaves. And here in this new country, safe from the twin perils of the land he had left&taxation that ate up crops and barns and the ever-present threat of sudden confiscation&he intended to have them. But having that ambition and bringing it to realization were two different matters, he discovered as time went by. Coastal Georgia was too firmly held by an entrenched aristocracy for him ever to hope to win the place he intended to have.
Then the hand of Fate and a hand of poker combined to give him the plantation which he afterwards called Tara, and at the same time moved him out of the Coast into the upland country of north Georgia.
It was in a saloon in Savannah, on a hot night in spring, when the chance conversation of a stranger sitting near by made Gerald prick up his ears. The stranger, a native of Savannah, had just returned after twelve years in the inland country. He had been one of the winners in the land lottery conducted by the State to divide up the vast area in middle Georgia, ceded by the Indians the year before Gerald came to America. He had gone up there and esta but, now the house had burned down, he was tired of the &accursed place& and would be most happy to get it off his hands.
Gerald, his mind never free of the thought of owning a plantation of his own, arranged an introduction, and his interest grew as the stranger told how the northern section of the state was filling up with newcomers from the Carolinas and Virginia. Gerald had lived in Savannah long enough to acquire a viewpoint of the Coast&that all of the rest of the state was backwoods, with an Indian lurking in every thicket. In transacting business for O&Hara Brothers, he had visited Augusta, a hundred miles up the Savannah River, and he had traveled inland far enough to visit the old towns westward from that city. He knew that section to be as well settled as the Coast, but from the stranger&s description, his plantation was more than two hundred and fifty miles inland from Savannah to the north and west, and not many miles south of the Chattahoochee River. Gerald knew that northward beyond that stream the land was still held by the Cherokees, so it was with amazement that he heard the stranger jeer at suggestions of trouble with the Indians and narrate how thriving towns were growing up and plantations prospering in the new country.
An hour later when the conversation began to lag, Gerald, with a guile that belied the wide innocence of his bright blue eyes, proposed a game. As the night wore on and the drinks went round, there came a time when all the others in the game laid down their hands and Gerald and the stranger were battling alone. The stranger shoved in all his chips and followed with the deed to his plantation. Gerald shoved in all his chips and laid on top of them his wallet. If the money it contained happened to belong to the firm of O&Hara Brothers, Gerald&s conscience was not sufficiently troubled to confess it before Mass the following morning. He knew what he wanted, and when Gerald wanted something he gained it by taking the most direct route. Moreover, such was his faith in his destiny and four deuces that he never for a moment wondered just how the money would be paid back should a higher hand be laid down across the table.
&It&s no bargain you&re getting and I am glad not to have to pay more taxes on the place,& sighed the possessor of an &ace full,& as he called for pen and ink. &The big house burned a year ago and the fields are growing up in brush and seedling pine. But it&s yours.&
&Never mix cards and whisky unless you were weaned on Irish poteen,& Gerald told Pork gravely the same evening, as Pork assisted him to bed. And the valet, who had begun to attempt a brogue out of admiration for his new master, made requisite answer in a combination of Geechee and County Meath that would have puzzled anyone except those two alone.
The muddy Flint River, running silently between walls of pine and water oak covered with tangled vines, wrapped about Gerald&s new land like a curving arm and embraced it on two sides. To Gerald, standing on the small knoll where the house had been, this tall barrier of green was as visible and pleasing an evidence of ownership as though it were a fence that he himself had built to mark his own. He stood on the blackened foundation stones of the burned building, looked down the long avenue of trees leading toward the road and swore lustily, with a joy too deep for thankful prayer. These twin lines of somber trees were his, his the abandoned lawn, waist high in weeds under white-starred young magnolia trees. The uncultivated fields, studded with tiny pines and underbrush, that stretched their rolling red-clay surface away into the distance on four sides belonged to Gerald O&Hara&were all his because he had an unbefuddled Irish head and the courage to stake everything on a hand of cards.
Gerald closed his eyes and, in the stillness of the unworked acres, he felt that he had come home. Here under his feet would rise a house of whitewashed brick. Across the road would be new rail fences, inclosing fat cattle and blooded horses, and the red earth that rolled down the hillside to the rich river bottom land would gleam white as eiderdown in the sun& acres and acres of cotton! The fortunes of the O&Haras would rise again.
With his own small stake, what he could borrow from his unenthusiastic brothers and a neat sum from mortgaging the land, Gerald bought his first field hands and came to Tara to live in bachelor solitude in the four-room overseer&s house, till such a time as the white walls of Tara should rise.
He cleared the fields and planted cotton and borrowed more money from James and Andrew to buy more slaves. The O&Haras were a clannish tribe, clinging to one another in prosperity as well as in adversity, not for any overweening family affection but because they had learned through grim years that to survive a family must present an unbroken front to the world. They lent Gerald the money and, in the years that followed, the money came back to them with interest. Gradually the plantation widened out, as Gerald bought more acres lying near him, and in time the white house became a reality instead of a dream.
It was built by slave labor, a clumsy sprawling building that crowned the rise of ground overlooking the green incline of pasture land runni and it pleased Gerald greatly, for, even when new, it wore a look of mellowed years. The old oaks, which had seen Indians pass under their limbs, hugged the house closely with their great trunks and towered their branches over the roof in dense shade. The lawn, reclaimed from weeds, grew thick with clover and Bermuda grass, and Gerald saw to it that it was well kept. From the avenue of cedars to the row of white cabins in the slave quarters, there was an air of solidness, of stability and permanence about Tara, and whenever Gerald galloped around the bend in the road and saw his own roof rising through green branches, his heart swelled with pride as though each sight of it were the first sight.
He had done it all, little, hard-headed, blustering Gerald.
Gerald, was on excellent terms with all his neighbors in the County, except the MacIntoshs whose land adjoined his on the left and the Slatterys whose meager three acres stretched on his right along the swamp bottoms between the river and John Wilkes& plantation.
The MacIntoshs were Scotch-Irish and Orangemen and, had they possessed all the saintly qualities of the Catholic calendar, this ancestry would have damned them forever in Gerald&s eyes. True, they had lived in Georgia for seventy years and, before that, had spent a generation in the C but the first of the family who set foot on American shores had come from Ulster, and that was enough for Gerald.
They were a close-mouthed and stiff-necked family, who kept strictly to themselves and intermarried with their Carolina relatives, and Gerald was not alone in disliking them, for the County people were neighborly and sociable and none too tolerant of anyone lacking in those same qualities. Rumors of Abolitionist sympathies did not enhance the popularity of the Macintoshes. Old Angus had never manumitted a single slave and had committed the unpardonable social breach of selling some of his negroes to passing slave traders en route to the cane fields of Louisiana, but the rumors persisted.
&He&s an Abolitionist, no doubt,& observed Gerald to John Wilkes. &But, in an Orangeman, when a principle comes up against Scotch tightness, the principle fares ill.&
The Slatterys were another affair. Being poor white, they were not even accorded the& grudging respect that Angus Macintosh&s dour independence wrung from neighboring families. Old Slattery, who clung persistently to his few acres, in spite of repeated offers from Gerald and John Wilkes, was shiftless and whining. His wife was a snarly-haired woman, sickly and washed-out of appearance, the mother of a brood of sullen and rabbity-looking children&a brood which was increased regularly every year. Tom Slattery owned no slaves, and he and his two oldest boys spasmodically worked their few acres of cotton, while the wife and younger children tended what was supposed to be a vegetable garden. But, somehow, the cotton always failed, and the garden, due to Mrs. Slattery&s constant childbearing, seldom furnished enough to feed her flock.
The sight of Tom Slattery dawdling on his neighbors& porches, begging cotton seed for planting or a side of bacon to &tide him over,& was a familiar one. Slattery hated his neighbors with what little energy he possessed, sensing their contempt beneath their courtesy, and especially did he hate &rich folks& uppity niggers.& The house negroes of the County considered themselves superior to white trash, and their unconcealed scorn stung him, while their more secure position in life stirred his envy. By contrast with his own miserable existence, they were well-fed, well-clothed and looked after in sickness and old age. They were proud of the good names of their owners and, for the most part, proud to belong to people who were quality, while he was despised by all.
Tom Slattery could have sold his farm for three times its value to any of the planters in the County. They would have considered it money well spent to rid the community of an eyesore, but he was well satisfied to remain and to subsist miserably on the proceeds of a bale of cotton a year and the charity of his neighbors.
With all the rest of the County, Gerald was on terms of amity and some intimacy. The Wilkeses, the Calverts, the Tarletons, the Fontaines, all smiled when the small figure on the big white horse galloped up their driveways, smiled and signaled for tall glasses in which a pony of Bourbon had been poured over a teaspoon of sugar and a sprig of crushed mint. Gerald was likable, and the neighbors learned in time what the children, negroes and dogs discovered at first sight, that a kind heart, a ready and sympathetic ear and an open pocketbook lurked just behind his. bawling voice and his truculent manner.
His arrival was always amid a bedlam of hounds barking and small black children shouting as they raced to meet him, quarreling for the privilege of holding his horse and squirming and grinning under his good-natured insults. The white children clamored to sit on his knee and be trotted, while he denounced to their elders the infamy of Y the daughters of his friends took him into their confidence about their love affairs, and the youths of the neighborhood, fearful of confessing debts of honor upon the carpets of their fathers, found him a friend in need.
&So, you&ve been owning this for a month, you young rascal!& he would shout &And, in God&s name, why haven&t you been asking me for the money before this?&
His rough manner of speech was too well known to give offense, and it only made the young men grin sheepishly and reply: &Well, sir, I hated to trouble you, and my father&&
&Your father&s a good man, and no denying it, but strict, and so take this and let&s be hearing no more of it&
The planters& ladies were the last to capitulate. But, when Mrs. Wilkes, &a great lady and with a rare gift for silence,& as Gerald characterized her, told her husband one evening, after Gerald&s horse had pounded down the driveway. &He has a rough tongue, but he is a gentleman,& Gerald had definitely arrived.
He did not know that he had taken nearly ten years to arrive, for it never occurred to him that his neighbors had eyed him askance at first. In his own mind, there had never been any doubt that he belonged, from the moment he first set foot on Tara.
When Gerald was forty-three, so thickset of body and florid of face that he looked like a hunting squire out of a sporting print, it came to him that Tara, dear though it was, and the County folk, with their open hearts and open houses, were not enough. He wanted a wife.
Tara cried out for a mistress. The fat cook, a yard negro elevated by necessity to the kitchen, never had the meals on time, and the chambermaid, formerly a field hand, let dust accumulate on the furniture and never seemed to have clean linen on hand, so that the arrival of guests was always the occasion of much stirring and to-do. Pork, the only trained house negro on the place, had general supervision over the other servants, but even he had grown slack and careless after several years of exposure to Gerald&s happy-go-lucky mode of living. As valet, he kept Gerald&s bedroom in order, and, as butler, he served the meals with dignity and style, but otherwise he pretty well let matters follow their own course.
With unerring African instinct, the negroes had all discovered that Gerald had a loud bark and no bite at all, and they took shameless advantage of him. The air was always thick with threats of selling slaves south and of direful whippings, but there never had been a slave sold from Tara and only one whipping, and that administered for not grooming down Gerald&s pet horse after, a long day&s hunting.
Gerald&s sharp blue eyes noticed how efficiently his neighbors& houses were run and with what ease the smooth-haired wives in rustling skirts managed their servants. He had no knowledge of the dawn-till-midnight activities of these women, chained to supervision of cooking, nursing, sewing and laundering. He only saw the outward results, and those results impressed him.
The urgent need of a wife became clear to him one morning when he was dressing to ride to town for Court Day. Pork brought forth his favorite ruffled shirt, so inexpertly mended by the chambermaid as to be unwearable by anyone except his valet
&Mist& Gerald,& said Pork, gratefully rolling up the shirt as Gerald fumed, &whut you needs is a wife, and a wife whut has got plen&y of house niggers.&
Gerald upbraided Pork for his impertinence, hut he knew that he was right He wanted a wife and he wanted children and, if he did not acquire them soon, it would be too late. But he was not going to marry just anyone, as Mr. Calvert had done, taking to wife the Yankee governess of his motherless children. His wife must be a lady and a lady of blood, with as many airs and graces as Mrs. Wilkes and the ability to manage Tara as well as Mrs. Wilkes ordered her own domain.
But there were two difficulties in the way of marriage into the County families. The first was the scarcity of girls of marriageable age. The second, and more serious one, was that Gerald was a &new man,& despite his nearly ten years& residence, and a foreigner. No one knew anything about his family. While the society of up-country Georgia was not so impregnable as that of the Coast aristocrats, no family wanted a daughter to wed a man about whose grandfather nothing was known.
Gerald knew that despite the genuine liking of the County men with whom he hunted, drank and talked politics there was hardly one whose daughter he could marry. And he did not intend to have it gossiped about over supper tables that this, that or the other father had regretfully refused to let Gerald O&Hara pay court to his daughter. This knowledge did not make Gerald feel inferior to his neighbors: Nothing could ever make Gerald feel that he was inferior in any way to anyone. It was merely a quaint custom of the County that daughters only married into families who had lived in the South much longer than twenty-two years, had owned land and slaves and been addicted only to the fashionable vices during that time.
&Pack up. We&re going to Savannah,& he told Pork. &And if I hear you say &Whist!& or &Faith!& but once, it&s selling you I&ll be doing, for they are words I seldom say meself.&
James and Andrew might have some advice to offer on this subject of marriage, and there might be daughters among their old friends who would both meet his requirements and find him acceptable as a husband. James and Andrew listened to his story patiently but they gave him little encouragement. They had no Savannah relatives to whom they might look for assistance, for they had been married when they came to America. And the daughters of their old friends had long since married and were raising small children of their own.
&You&re not a rich man and you haven&t a great family,& said James.
&I&ve made me money and I can make a great family. And I won&t be marrying just anyone.&
&You fly high,& observed Andrew, dryly.
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.
If Ellen had ever regretted her sudden decision to marry him, no one ever knew it, certainly not Gerald, who almost burst with pride whenever he looked at her. She had put Savannah and its memories behind her when she left that gently mannered city by the sea, and, from the moment of her arrival in the County, north Georgia was her home.
When she departed from her father&s house forever, she had left a home whose lines were as beautiful and flowing as a woman&s body, as a pale pink stucco house built in the French colonial style, set high from the ground in a dainty manner, approached by swirling stairs, banistered with wrought iron a dim, rich house, gracious but aloof.
She had left not only that graceful dwelling but also the entire civilization that was behind the building of it, and she found herself in a world that was as strange and different as if she had crossed a continent.
Here in north Georgia was a rugged section held by a hardy people. High up on the plateau at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, she saw rolling red hills wherever she looked, with huge outcroppings of the underlying granite and gaunt pines towering somberly everywhere. It all seemed wild and untamed to her coast-bred eyes accustomed to the quiet jungle beauty of the sea islands draped in their gray moss and tangled green, the white stretches of beach hot beneath a semitropic sun, the long flat vistas of sandy land studded with palmetto and palm.
This was a section that knew the chill of winter, as well as the heat of summer, and there was a vigor and energy in the people that was strange to her. They were a kindly people, courteous, generous, filled with abounding good nature, but sturdy, virile, easy to anger. The people of the Coast which she had left might pride themselves on taking all their affairs, even their duels and their feuds, with a careless air but these north Georgia people had a streak of violence in them. On the coast, life had mellowed&here it was young and lusty and new.
All the people Ellen had known in Savannah might have been cast from the same mold, so similar were their view points and traditions, but here was a variety of people. North Georgia&s settlers were coming in from many different places, from other parts of Georgia, from the Carolinas and Virginia, from Europe and the North. Some of them, like Gerald, were new people seeking their fortunes. Some, like Ellen, were members of old families who had found life intolerable in their former homes and sought haven in a distant land. Many had moved for no reason at all, except that the restless blood of pioneering fathers still quickened in their veins.
These people, drawn from many different places and with many different backgrounds, gave the whole life of the County an informality that was new to Ellen, an informality to which she never quite accustomed herself. She instinctively knew how Coast people would act in any circumstance. There was never any telling what north Georgians would do.
And, quickening all of the affairs of the section, was the high tide of prosperity then rolling over the South. All of the world was crying out for cotton, and the new land of the County, unworn and fertile, produced it abundantly. Cotton was the heartbeat of the section, the planting and the picking were the diastole and systole of the red earth. Wealth came out of the curving furrows, and arrogance came too&arrogance built on green bushes and the acres of fleecy white. If cotton could make them rich in one generation, how much richer they would be in the next!
This certainty of the morrow gave zest and enthusiasm to life, and the County people enjoyed life with a heartiness that Ellen could never understand. They had money enough and slaves enough to give them time to play, and they liked to play. They seemed never too busy to drop work for a fish fry, a hunt or a horse race, and scarcely a week went by without its barbecue or ball.
Ellen never would, or could, quite become one of them&she had left too much of herself in Savannah&but she respected them and, in time, learned to admire the frankness and forthrightness of these people, who had few reticences and who valued a man for what he was.
She became the best-loved neighbor in the County. She was a thrifty and kind mistress, a good mother and a devoted wife. The heartbreak and selflessness that she would have dedicated to the Church were devoted instead to the service of her child, her household and the man who had taken her out of Savannah and its memories and had never asked any questions.
When Scarlett was a year old, and more healthy and vigorous than a girl baby had any right to be, in Mammy&s opinion, Ellen&s second child, named Susan Elinor, but always called Suellen, was born, and in due time came Carreen, listed in the family Bible as Caroline Irene. Then followed three little boys, each of whom died before he had learned to walk&three little boys who now lay under the twisted cedars in the burying ground a hundred yards from the house, beneath three stones, each bearing the name of &Gerald O&Hara, Jr.&
From the day when Ellen first came to Tara, the place had been transformed. If she was only fifteen years old, she was nevertheless ready for the responsibilities of the mistress of a plantation. Before marriage, young girls must be, above all other things, sweet, gentle, beautiful and ornamental, but, after marriage, they were expected to manage households that numbered a hundred people or more, white and black, and they were trained with that in view.
Ellen had been given this preparation for marriage which any well-brought-up young lady received, and she also had Mammy, who could galvanize the most shiftless negro into energy. She quickly brought order, dignity and grace into Gerald&s household, and she gave Tara a beauty it had never had before.
The house had been built according to no architectural plan whatever, with extra rooms added where and when it seemed convenient, but, with Ellen&s care and attention, it gained a charm that made up for its lack of design. The avenue of cedars leading from the main road to the house&that avenue of cedars without which no Georgia planter&s home could be complete&had a cool dark shadiness that gave a brighter tinge, by contrast, to the green of the other trees. The wistaria tumbling over the verandas showed bright against the whitewashed brick, and it joined with the pink cr&pe myrtle bushes by the door and the white-blossomed magnolias in the yard to disguise some of the awkward lines of the house.
In spring time and summer, the Bermuda grass and clover on the lawn became emerald, so enticing an emerald that it presented an irresistible temptation to the flocks of turkeys and white geese that were supposed to roam only the regions in the rear of the house. The elders of the flocks continually led stealthy advances into the front yard, lured on by the green of the grass and the luscious promise of the cape jessamine buds and the zinnia beds. Against their depredations, a small black sentinel was stationed on the front porch. Armed with a ragged towel, the little negro boy sitting on the steps was part of the picture of Tara&and an unhappy one, for he was forbidden to chunk the fowls and could only flap the towel at them and shoo them.
Ellen set dozens of little black boys to this task, the first position of responsibility a male slave had at Tara. After they had passed their tenth year, they were sent to old Daddy the plantation cobbler to learn his trade, or to Amos the wheelwright and carpenter, or Phillip the cow man, or Cuffee the mule boy. If they showed no aptitude for any of these trades, they became field hands and, in the opinion of the negroes, they had lost their claim to any social standing at all.
Ellen&s life was not easy, nor was it happy, but she did not expect life to be easy, and, if it was not happy, that was woman&s lot. It was a man&s world, and she accepted it as such. The man owned the property, and the woman managed it. The man took the credit for the management, and the woman praised his cleverness. The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him. Men were rough of speech and often drunk. Women ignored the lapses of speech and put the drunkards to bed without bitter words. Men were rude and outspoken, women were always kind, gracious and forgiving.
She had been reared in the tradition of great ladies, which had taught her how to carry her burden and still retain her charm, and she intended that her three daughters should be great ladies also. With her younger daughters, she had success, for Suellen was so anxious to be attractive she lent an attentive and obedient ear to her mother&s teachings, and Carreen was shy and easily led. But Scarlett, child of Gerald, found the road to ladyhood hard.
To Mammy&s indignation, her preferred playmates were not her demure sisters or the well-brought-up Wilkes girls but the negro children on the plantation and the boys of the neighborhood, and she could climb a tree or throw a rock as well as any of them. Mammy was greatly perturbed that Ellen&s daughter should display such traits and frequently adjured her to &ack lak a lil lady.& But Ellen took a more tolerant and long-sighted view of the matter. She knew that from childhood playmates grew beaux in later years, and the first duty of a girl was to get married. She told herself that the child was merely full of life and there was still time in which to teach her the arts and graces of being attractive to men.
To this end, Ellen and Mammy bent their efforts, and as Scarlett grew older she became an apt pupil in this subject, even though she learned little else. Despite a succession of governesses and two years at the near-by Fayetteville Female Academy, her education was sketchy, but no girl in the County danced more gracefully than she. She knew how to smile so that her dimples leaped, how to walk pigeon-toed so that her wide hoop skirts swayed entrancingly, how to look up into a man&s face and then drop her eyes and bat the lids rapidly so that she seemed a-tremble with gentle emotion. Most of all she learned how to conceal from men a sharp intelligence beneath a face as sweet and bland as a baby&s.
Ellen, by soft-voiced admonition, and Mammy, by constant carping, labored to inculcate in her the qualities that would make her truly desirable as a wife.
&You must be more gentle, dear, more sedate,& Ellen told her daughter. &You must not interrupt gentlemen when they are speaking, even if you do think you know more about matters than they do. Gentlemen do not like forward girls.&
&Young misses whut frowns an pushes out dey chins an& says &Ah will& and &Ah woan& mos& gener&ly doan ketch husbands,& prophesied Mammy gloomily. &Young misses should cas& down dey eyes an& say, Well, suh, Ah mout& an& &Jes& as you say, suh.& &
Between them, they taught her all that a gentlewoman should know, but she learned only the outward signs of gentility. The inner grace from which these signs should spring, she never learned nor did she see any reason for learning it. Appearances were enough, for the appearances of ladyhood won her popularity and that was all she wanted. Gerald bragged that she was the belle of five counties, and with some truth, for she had received proposals from nearly all the young men in the neighborhood and many from places as far away as Atlanta and Savannah.
At sixteen, thanks to Mammy and Ellen, she looked sweet, charming and giddy, but she was, in reality, self-willed, vain and obstinate. She had the easily stirred passions of her Irish father and nothing except the thinnest veneer of her mother&s unselfish and forbearing nature. Ellen never fully realized that it was only a veneer, for Scarlett always showed her best face to her mother, concealing her escapades, curbing her temper and appearing as sweet-natured as she could in Ellen&s presence, for her mother could shame her to tears with a reproachful glance.
But Mammy was under no illusions about her and was constantly alert for breaks in the veneer. Mammy&s eyes were sharper than Ellen&s, and Scarlett could never recall in all her life having fooled Mammy for long.
It was not that these two loving mentors deplored Scarlett&s high spirits, vivacity and charm. These were traits of which Southern women were proud. It was Gerald&s headstrong and impetuous nature in her that gave them concern, and they sometimes feared they would not be able to conceal her damaging qualities until she had made a good match. But Scarlett intended to marry&and marry Ashley&and she was willing to appear demure, pliable and scatterbrained, if those were the qualities that attracted men. Just why men should be this way, she did not know. She only knew that such methods worked. It never interested her enough to try to think out the reason for it, for she knew nothing of the inner workings of any human being&s mind, not even her own. She knew only that if she did or said thus-and-so, men would unerringly respond with the complementary thus-and-so. It was like a mathematical formula and no more difficult, for mathematics was the one subject that had come easy to Scarlett in her schooldays.
If she knew little about men&s minds, she knew even less about the minds of women, for they interested her less. She had never had a girl friend, and she never felt any lack on that account. To her, all women, including her two sisters, were natural enemies in pursuit of the same prey&man.
All women with the one exception of her mother.
Ellen O&Hara was different, and Scarlett regarded her as something holy and apart from all the rest of humankind. When Scarlett was a child, she had confused her mother with the Virgin Mary, and now that she was older she saw no reason for changing her opinion. To her, Ellen represented the utter security that only Heaven or a mother can give. She knew that her mother was the embodiment of justice, truth, loving tenderness and profound wisdom&a great lady.
Scarlett wanted very much to be like her mother. The only difficulty was that by being just and truthful and tender and unselfish, one missed most of the joys of life, and certainly many beaux. And life was too short to miss such pleasant things. Some day when she was married to Ashley and old, some day when she had time for it, she intended to be like Ellen. But, until then &
爱伦&奥哈拉现年３２岁，依当时的标准已是个中年妇人，她生有六个孩子，但其中三个已经夭折。她高高的，比那位火爆性子的矮个儿丈夫高出一头，不过她的举止是那么文静，}