“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 worstlookin’ dresses to town, just to show how they didn’t care and was proud to wear them. But not Suellen. And she wanted a horse 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, Will 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.
“Well, about a month ago I took her into Jonesboro and left her to go callin’ while I tended to business and when I took her home, she was still as a mouse but I could see she was so excited she was ready to bust. I thought she’d found out somebody was goin’ to have a-that she’d heard some gossip that was interestin’, and I didn’t pay her much mind. She went around home for about a week all swelled up and excited and didn’t have much to say. She went over to see Miss Cathleen Calvert-Scarlett, you’d cry your eyes out at Miss Cathleen. Pore girl, she’d better be dead than married to that pusillanimous Yankee Hilton. You knew he’d mortgaged the place and lost it and they’re goin’ to have to leave?”
“No, I didn’t know and I don’t want to know. I want to know about Pa.”
“Well, I’m gettin’ to that,” said Will patiently. “When she come back from over there she said we’d all misjudged Hilton. She called him Mr. Hilton and she said he was a smart man, but we just laughed at her. Then she took to takin’ your pa out to walk in the afternoons and lots of times when I was comin’ home from the field I’d see her sittin’ with him on the wall ‘round the buryin’ ground, talkin’ at him hard and wavin’ her hands. And the old gentleman would just look at her sort of puzzled-like and shake his head. You know how he’s been, Scarlett. He just got kind of vaguer and vaguer, like he didn’t hardly know where he was or who we were. One time, I seen her point to your ma’s grave and the old gentleman begun to cry. And when she come in the house all happy and excited lookin’, I gave her a talkin’ to, right sharp, too, and I said: ‘Miss Suellen, why in hell are you devilin’ your poor pa and bringin’ up your ma to him? Most of the time he don’t realize she’s dead and here you are rubbin’ it in.’ And she just kind of tossed her head and laughed and said: ‘Mind your business. Some day you’ll be glad of what I’m doin’.’ Miss Melanie told me last night that Suellen had told her about her schemes but Miss Melly said she didn’t have no notion Suellen was serious. She said she didn’t tell none of us because she was so upset at the very idea.”
“What idea? Are you ever going to get to the point? We’re halfway home now. I want to know about Pa.”
“I’m trying to tell you,” said Will, “and we’re so near home, I guess I’d better stop right here till I’ve finished.”
He drew rein and the horse stopped and snorted. They had halted by the wild overgrown mock-orange hedge that marked the Macintosh property. Glancing under the dark trees Scarlett could just discern the tall ghostly chimneys still rearing above the silent ruin. She wished that Will had chosen any other place to stop.
“Well, the long and the short of her idea was to make the Yankees pay for the cotton they burned and the stock they drove off and the fences and the barns they tore down.”
“The Yankees?”
“Haven’t you heard about it? The Yankee government’s been payin’ claims on all destroyed property of Union sympathizers in the South.”
“Of course I’ve heard about that,” said Scarlett. “But what’s that got to do with us?”
“A heap, in Suellen’s opinion. That day I took her to Jonesboro, she run into Mrs. MacIntosh and when they were gossipin’ along, Suellen couldn’t help noticin’ what fine-lookin’ clothes Mrs. Macintosh had on and she couldn’t help askin’ about them. Then Mrs. MacIntosh gave herself a lot of airs and said as how her husband had put in a claim with the Federal government for destroyin’ the property of a loyal Union sympathizer who had never given aid and comfort to the Confederacy in any shape or form.”
“They never gave aid and comfort to anybody,” snapped Scarlett. “Scotch-Irish!”
“Well, maybe that’s true. I don’t know them. Anyway, the government gave them, well-I forget how many thousand dollars. A right smart sum it was, though. That started Suellen. She thought about it all week and didn’t say nothin’ to us because she knew we’d just laugh. But she just had to talk to somebody so she went over to Miss Cathleen’s and that damned white trash, Hilton, gave her a passel of new ideas. He pointed out that your pa warn’t even born in this country, that he hadn’t fought in the war and hadn’t had no sons to fight, and hadn’t never held no office under the Confederacy. He said they could strain a point about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union sympathizer. He filled her up with such truck and she come home and begun workin’ on Mr. O’Hara. Scarlett, I bet my life your pa didn’t even know half the time what she was talkin’ about. That was what she was countin’ on, that he would take the Iron Clad oath and not even know it.”
“Pa take the Iron Clad oath!” cried Scarlett.
“Well, he’d gotten right feeble in his mind these last months and I guess she was countin’ on that. Mind you, none of us suspicioned nothin’ about it. We knew she was cookin’ up somethin’, but we didn’t know she was usin’ your dead ma to reproach him for his daughters bein’ in rags when he could get a hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of the Yankees.”
“One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,” murmured Scarlett, her horror at the oath fading.
What a lot of money that was! And to be had for the mere signing of an oath of allegiance to the United States government, an oath stating that the signer had always supported the government and never given aid and comfort to its enemies. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars! That much money for that small a lie! Well, she couldn’t blame Suellen. Good heavens! Was that what Alex meant by wanting to rawhide her? What the County meant by intending to cut her? Fools, every one of them. What couldn’t she do with that much money! What couldn’t any of the folks in the County do with it! And what did so small a lie matter? After all, anything you could get out of the Yankees was fair money, no matter how you got it.
“Yesterday, about noon when Ashley and me were splittin’ rails, Suellen got this wagon and got your pa in it and off they went to town without a word to anybody. Miss Melly had a notion what it was all about but she was prayin’ somethin’ would change Suellen, so she didn’t say nothin’ to the rest of us. She just didn’t see how Suellen could do such a thing.
“Today I heard all about what happened. That pusillanimous fellow, Hilton, had some influence with the other Scallawags and Republicans in town and Suellen had agreed to give them some of the money-I don’t know how much-if they’d kind of wink their eye about Mr. O’Hara bein’ a loyal Union man and play on how he was an Irishman and didn’t fight in the army and so on, and sign recommendations. All your pa had to do was take the oath and sign the paper and off it would go to Washington.
“They rattled off the oath real fast and he didn’t say nothin’ and it went right well till she got him up to the signin’ of it. And then the old gentleman kind of come to himself for a minute and shook his head. I don’t think he knew what it was all about but he didn’t like it and Suellen always did rub him the wrong way. Well, that just about gave her the nervous fits after all the trouble she’d gone to. She took him out of the office and rode him up and down the road and talked to him about your ma cryin’ out of her grave at him for lettin’ her children suffer when he could provide for them. They tell me your pa sat there in the wagon and cried like a baby, like he always does when he hears her name. Everybody in town saw them and Alex Fontaine went over to see what was the matter, but Suellen gave him the rough side of her tongue and told him to mind his own business, so he went off mad.
“I don’t know where she got the notion but some time in the afternoon she got a bottle of brandy and took Mr. O’Hara back to the office and begun pourin’ it for him. Scarlett, we haven’t had no spirits ‘round Tara for a year, just a little blackberry wine and scuppernong wine Dilcey makes, and Mr. O’Hara warn’t used to it. He got real drunk, and after Suellen had argued and nagged a couple of hours he gave in and said Yes, he’d sign anything she wanted. They got the oath out again and just as he was about to put pen to paper, Suellen made her mistake. She said: ‘Well, now. I guess the Slatterys and the MacIntoshes won’t be givin’ themselves airs over us!’ You see, Scarlett, the Slatterys had put in a claim for a big amount for that little shack of theirs that the Yankees burned and Emmie’s husband had got it through Washington for them.
“They tell me that when Suellen said those names, your pa kind of straightened up and squared his shoulders and looked at her, sharplike. He warn’t vague no more and he said: ‘Have the Slatterys and the MacIntoshes signed somethin’ like this?’ and Suellen got nervous and said Yes and No and stuttered and he shouted right loud: ‘Tell me, did that God-damned Orangeman and that God-damned poor white sign somethin’ like this?’ And that feller Hilton spoke up smooth-like and said: ‘Yes sir, they did and they got a pile of money like you’ll get. ‘
“And then the old gentleman let out a roar like a bull. Alex Fontaine said he heard him from down the street at the saloon. And he said with a brogue you could cut with a butterknife: ‘And were ye afther thinkin’ an O’Hara of Tara would be follyin’ the dirthy thracks of a Goddamned Orangeman and a God-damned poor white?’ And he tore the paper in two and threw it in Suellen’s face and he bellowed: ‘Ye’re no daughter of mine!’ and he was out of the office before you could say Jack Robinson.
“Alex said he saw him come out on the street, chargin’ like a bull. He said the old gentleman looked like his old self for the first time since your ma died. Said he was reelin’ drunk and cussin’ at the top of his lungs. Alex said he never heard such fine cussin’. Alex’s horse was standin’ there and your pa climbed on it without a by-your-leave and off he went in a cloud of dust so thick it choked you, cussin’ every breath he drew.
“Well, about sundown Ashley and me were sittin’ on the front step, lookin’ down the road and mighty worried. Miss Melly was upstairs cryin’ on her bed and wouldn’t tell us nothin’. Terrectly, we heard a poundin’ down the road and somebody yellin’ like they was fox huntin’ and Ashley said: ‘That’s queer! That sounds like Mr. O’Hara when he used to ride over to see us before the war.”
“And then we seen him way down at the end of the pasture. He must have jumped the fence right over there. And he come ridin’ hellfor-leather up the hill, singin’ at the top of his voice like he didn’t have a care in the world. I didn’t know your pa had such a voice. He was singin’ ‘Peg in a Low-backed Car’ and beatin’ the horse with his hat and the horse was goin’ like mad. He didn’t draw rein when he come near the top and we seen he was goin’ to jump the pasture fence and we hopped up, scared to death, and then he yelled: ‘Look, Ellen! Watch me take this one!’ But the horse stopped right on his haunches at the fence and wouldn’t take the jump and your pa went right over his head. He didn’t suffer none. He was dead time we got to him. I guess it broke his neck.”
Will waited a minute for her to speak and when she did not he picked up the reins. “Giddap, Sherman,” he said, and the horse started on toward home.
Chapter XL
Scarlett slept little that night. When the dawn had come and the sun was creeping over the black pines on the hills to the east, she rose from her tumbled bed and, seating herself on a stool by the window, laid her tired head on her arm and looked out over the barn yard and orchard of Tara toward the cotton fields. Everything was fresh and dewy and silent and green and the sight of the cotton fields brought a measure of balm and comfort to her sore heart. Tara, at sunrise, looked loved, well tended and at peace, for all that its master lay dead. The squatty log chicken house was clay daubed against rats, weasels and clean with whitewash, and so was the log stable. The garden with its rows of corn, bright-yellow squash, butter beans and turnips was well weeded and neatly fenced with split-oak rails. The orchard was cleared of underbrush and only daisies grew beneath the long rows of trees. The sun picked out with faint glistening the apples and the furred pink peaches half hidden in the green leaves. Beyond lay the curving rows of cotton, still and green under the gold of the new sky. The ducks and chickens were waddling and strutting off toward the fields, for under the bushes in the soft plowed earth were found the choicest worms and slugs.
Scarlett’s heart swelled with affection and gratitude to Will who had done all of this. Even her loyalty to Ashley could not make her believe he had been responsible for much of this well-being, for Tara’s bloom was not the work of a planter-aristocrat, but of the plodding, tireless “small farmer” who loved his land. It was a “two-horse” farm, not the lordly plantation of other days with pastures full of mules and fine horses and cotton and corn stretching as far as eye could see. But what there was of it was good and the acres that were lying fallow could be reclaimed when times grew better, and they would be the more fertile for their rest.
Will had done more than merely farm a few acres. He had kept sternly at bay those two enemies of Georgia planters, the seedling pine and the blackberry brambles. They had not stealthily taken garden and pasture and cotton field and lawn and reared themselves insolently by the porches of Tara, as they were doing on numberless plantations throughout the state.
Scarlett’s heart failed a beat when she thought how close Tara had come to going back to wilderness. Between herself and Will, they had done a good job. They had held off the Yankees, the Carpetbaggers and the encroachments of Nature. And, best of all, Will had told her that after the cotton came in in the fall, she need send no more money-unless some other Carpetbagger coveted Tara and skyrocketed the taxes. Scarlett knew Will would have a hard pull without her help but she admired and respected his independence. As long as he was in the position of hired help he would take her money, but now that he was to become her brother-inlaw and the man of the house, he intended to stand on his own efforts. Yes, Will was something the Lord had provided.
Pork had dug the grave the night before, close by Ellen’s grave, and he stood, spade in hand, behind the moist red clay he was soon to shovel back in place. Scarlett stood behind him in the patchy shade of a gnarled low-limbed cedar, the hot sun of the June morning dappling her, and tried to keep her eyes away from the red trench in front of her. Jim Tarleton, little Hugh Munroe, Alex Fontaine and old man McRae’s youngest grandson came slowly and awkwardly down the path from the house bearing Gerald’s coffin on two lengths of split oak. Behind them, at a respectful distance, followed a large straggling crowd of neighbors and friends, shabbily dressed, silent. As they came down the sunny path through the garden, Pork bowed his head upon the top of the spade handle and cried; and Scarlett saw with incurious surprise that the kinks on his head, so jettily black when she went to Atlanta a few months before, were now grizzled.
She thanked God tiredly that she had cried all her tears the night before, so now she could stand erect and dry eyed. The sound of Suellen’s tears, just back of her shoulder, irritated her unbearably and she had to clench her fists to keep from turning and slapping the swollen face. Sue had been the cause of her father’s death, whether she intended it or not, and she should have the decency to control herself in front of the hostile neighbors. Not a single person had spoken to her that morning or given her one look of sympathy. They had kissed Scarlett quietly, shaken her hand, murmured kind words to Carreen and even to Pork but had looked through Suellen as if she were not there.
To them she had done worse than murder her father. She had tried to betray him into disloyalty to the South. And to that grim and close-knit community it was as if she had tried to betray the honor of them all. She had broken the solid front the County presented to the world. By her attempt to get money from the Yankee government she had aligned herself with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags, more hated enemies than the Yankee soldiers had ever been. She, a member of an old and staunchly Confederate family, a planter’s family, had gone over to the enemy and by so doing had brought shame on every family in the County.
The mourners were seething with indignation and downcast with sorrow, especially three of them-old man McRae, who had been Gerald’s crony since he came to the up-country from Savannah so many years before, Grandma Fontaine who loved him because he was Ellen’s husband, and Mrs. Tarleton who had been closer to him than to any of her neighbors because, as she often said, he was the only man in the County who knew a stallion from a gelding.
The sight of the stormy faces of these three in the dim parlor where Gerald lay before the funeral had caused Ashley and Will some uneasiness and they had retired to Ellen’s office for a consultation.
“Some of them are goin’ to say somethin’ about Suellen,” said Will abruptly, biting his straw in half. “They think they got just cause to say somethin’. Maybe they have. It ain’t for me to say. But, Ashley, whether they’re right or not, we’ll have to resent it, bein’ the men of the family, and then there’ll be trouble. Can’t nobody do nothin’ with old man McRae because he’s deaf as a post and can’t hear folks tryin’ to shut him up. And you know there ain’t nobody in God’s world ever stopped Grandma Fontaine from speakin’ her mind. And as for Mrs. Tarleton-did you see her roll them russet eyes of hers every time she looked at Sue? She’s got her ears laid back and can’t hardly wait. If they say somethin’, we got to take it up and we got enough trouble at Tara now without bein’ at outs with our neighbors.”
Ashley sighed worriedly. He knew the tempers of his neighbors better than Will did and he remembered that fully half of the quarrels and some of the shootings of the days before the war had risen from the County custom of saying a few words over the coffins of departed neighbors. Generally the words were eulogistic in the extreme but occasionally they were not. Sometimes, words meant in the utmost respect were misconstrued by overstrung relatives of the dead and scarcely were the last shovels of earth mounded above the coffin before trouble began.
In the absence of a priest Ashley was to conduct the services with the aid of Carreen’s Book of Devotions, the assistance of the Methodist and Baptist preachers of Jonesboro and Fayetteville having been tactfully refused. Carreen, more devoutly Catholic than her sisters, had been very upset that Scarlett had neglected to bring a priest from Atlanta with her and had only been a little eased by the reminder that when the priest came down to marry Will and Suellen, he could read the services over Gerald. It was she who objected to the neighboring Protestant preachers and gave the matter into Ashley’s hands, marking passages in her book for him to read. 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 inclosure 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, coon-skin 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 sun-bonnets were sallow and malariallooking 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.
“Oh!” thought Scarlett, her throat constricting. “How beautiful his voice is! If anyone has to do this for Pa, I’m glad it’s Ashley. I’d rather have him than a priest. I’d rather have Pa buried by one of his own folks than a stranger.”
When Ashley came to the part of the prayers concerning the souls in Purgatory, which Carreen had marked for him to read, he abruptly closed the book. Only Carreen noticed the omission and looked up puzzled, as he began the Lord’s Prayer. Ashley knew that half the people present had never heard of Purgatory and those who had would take it as a personal affront, if he insinuated, even in prayer, that so fine a man as Mr. O’Hara had not gone straight to Heaven. So, in deference to public opinion, he skipped all mention of Purgatory. The gathering joined heartily in the Lord’s Prayer but their voices trailed off into embarrassed silence when he began the Hail Mary. They had never heard that prayer and they looked furtively at each other as the O’Hara girls, Melanie and the Tara servants gave the response: “Pray for us, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Then Ashley raised his head and stood for a moment, uncertain. The eyes of the neighbors were expectantly upon him as they settled themselves in easier positions for a long harangue. They were waiting for him to go on with the service, for it did not occur to any of them that he was at the end of the Catholic prayers. County funerals were always long. The Baptist and Methodist ministers who performed them had no set prayers but extemporized as the circumstances demanded and seldom stopped before all mourners were in tears and the bereaved feminine relatives screaming with grief. The neighbors would have been shocked, aggrieved and indignant, had these brief prayers been all the service over the body of their loved friend, and no one knew this better than Ashley. The matter would be discussed at dinner tables for weeks and the opinion of the County would be that the O’Hara girls had not shown proper respect for their father.
So he threw a quick apologetic glance at Carreen and, bowing his head again, began reciting from memory the Episcopal burial service which he had often read over slaves buried at Twelve Oaks.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life… and whosoever… believeth in Me shall never die.”
It did not come back to him readily and he spoke slowly, occasionally falling silent for a space as he waited for phrases to rise from his memory. But this measured delivery made his words more impressive, and mourners who had been dry-eyed before began now to reach for handkerchiefs. Sturdy Baptists and Methodists all, they thought it the Catholic ceremony and immediately rearranged their first opinion that the Catholic services were cold and Popish. Scarlett and Suellen were equally ignorant and thought the words comforting and beautiful. Only Melanie and Carreen realized that a devoutly Catholic Irishman was being laid to rest by the Church of England’s service. And Carreen was too stunned by grief and her hurt at Ashley’s treachery to interfere.
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