登陆注册
14726500000334

第334章

The governor’s mansion was brave with jigsaw work on banisters and eaves, but the intricate scrollwork on Scarlett’s house put the mansion to shame. The mansion had a ballroom, but it looked like a billiard table compared with the enormous room that covered the entire third floor of Scarlett’s house. In fact, her house had more of everything than the mansion, or any other house in town for that matter, more cupolas and turrets and towers and balconies and lightning rods and far more windows with colored panes.

A veranda encircled the entire house, and four flights of steps on the four sides of the building led up to it. The yard was wide and green and scattered about it were rustic iron benches, an iron summerhouse, fashionably called a “gazebo” which, Scarlett had been assured, was of pure Gothic design, and two large iron statues, one a stag and the other a mastiff as large as a Shetland pony. To Wade and Ella, a little dazzled by the size, splendor and fashionable dark gloom of their new home, these two metal animals were the only cheerful notes.

Within, the house was furnished as Scarlett had desired, with thick red carpeting which ran from wall to wall, red velvet portieres and the newest of highly varnished black-walnut furniture, carved wherever there was an inch for carving and upholstered in such slick horsehair that ladies had to deposit themselves thereon with great care for fear of sliding off. Everywhere on the walls were gilt-framed mirrors and long pier glasses—as many, Rhett said idly, as there were in Belle Watling’s establishment. Interspread were steel engravings in heavy frames, some of them eight feet long, which Scarlett had ordered especially from New York. The walls were covered with rich dark paper, the ceilings were high and the house was always dim, for the windows were overdraped with plum-colored plush hangings that shut out most of the sunlight.

All in all it was an establishment to take one’s breath away and Scarlett, stepping on the soft carpets and sinking into the embrace of the deep feather beds, remembered the cold floors and the straw-stuffed bedticks of Tara and was satisfied. She thought it the most beautiful and most elegantly furnished house she had ever seen, but Rhett said it was a nightmare. However, if it made her happy, she was welcome to it.

“A stranger without being told a word about us would know this house was built with ill-gotten gains,” he said. “You know, Scarlett, money ill come by never comes to good and this house is proof of the axiom. It’s just the kind of house a profiteer would build.”

But Scarlett, abrim with pride and happiness and full of plans for the entertainments she would give when they were thoroughly settled in the house, only pinched his ear playfully and said: “Fiddle-dee-dee! How you do run on!”

She knew, by now, that Rhett loved to take her down a peg, and would spoil her fun whenever he could, if she lent an attentive ear to his jibes. Should she take him seriously, she would be forced to quarrel with him and she did not care to match swords, for she always came off second best. So she hardly ever listened to anything he said, and what she was forced to hear she tried to turn off as a joke. At least, she tried for a while.

During their honeymoon and for the greater part of their stay at the National Hotel, they had lived together with amiability. But scarcely had they moved into the new house and Scarlett gathered her new friends about her, when sudden sharp quarrels sprang up between them. They were brief quarrels, short lived because it was impossible to keep a quarrel going with Rhett, who remained coolly indifferent to her hot words and waited his chance to pink her in an unguarded spot. She quarreled; Rhett did not. He only stated his unequivocal opinion of herself, her actions, her house and her new friends. And some of his opinions were of such a nature that she could no longer ignore them and treat them as jokes.

For instance when she decided to change the name of “Kennedy’s General Store” to something more edifying, she asked him to think of a title that would include the word “emporium.” Rhett suggested “Caveat Emptorium,” assuring her that it would be a title most in keeping with the type of goods sold in the store. She thought it had an imposing sound and even went so far as to have the sign painted, when Ashley Wilkes, embarrassed, translated the real meaning. And Rhett had roared at her rage.

And there was the way he treated Mammy. Mammy had never yielded an inch from her stand that Rhett was a mule in horse harness. She was polite but cold to Rhett. She always called him “Cap’n Butler,” never “Mist’ Rhett.” She never even dropped a curtsy when Rhett presented her with the red petticoat and she never wore it either. She kept Ella and Wade out of Rhett’s way whenever she could, despite the fact that Wade adored Uncle Rhett and Rhett was obviously fond of the boy. But instead of discharging Mammy or being short and stern with her, Rhett treated her with the utmost deference, with far more courtesy than he treated any of the ladies of Scarlett’s recent acquaintance. In fact, with more courtesy than he treated Scarlett herself. He always asked Mammy’s permission, to take Wade riding and consulted with her before he bought Ella dolls. And Mammy was hardly polite to him.

Scarlett felt that Rhett should be firm with Mammy, as became the head of the house, but Rhett only laughed and said that Mammy was the real head of the house.

He infuriated Scarlett by saying coolly that he was preparing to be very sorry for her some years hence, when the Republican rule was gone from Georgia and the Democrats back in power.

“When the Democrats get a governor and a legislature of their own, all your new vulgar Republican friends will be wiped off the chess board and sent back to minding bars and emptying slops where they belong. And you’ll be left out on the end of a limb, with never a Democratic friend or a Republican either. Well, take no thought of the morrow.”

同类推荐
热门推荐
  • 诡异游戏

    诡异游戏

    我知道这个任务很难,却没料到这个任务这么难,让我多次险死还生,其中疑云丛丛。
  • 时空穿越绝世倾城恋

    时空穿越绝世倾城恋

    女孩和男孩坠入了爱河,可在一天,天空突然闪起了雷,女孩和男孩穿越了,他们都有了新的身份,男孩还记得女孩,可女孩失忆了,他们还能在一起吗。。。
  • 医手遮天:废柴大小姐

    医手遮天:废柴大小姐

    “浅浅,为了我好好活下去……”他死在了她的怀中。前世,她是只会治病而手无寸铁的窝囊废,一夕穿越,她变成人人惧之的绝世神医!一根银针,治枯肉,肉白骨!废物?草包?看她如何逆袭成为大陆第一人!他是人人躲之的暴躁王爷,杀人不眨眼的魔头,却只对她温柔相待。他是世界最温柔的男子,似雪般纯洁,却唯独对他有着孩童般的心,愿意为她倾尽天下。“爷,别跟着我啦,我又不是你的止咳药。”“可你是我的止疼药。”一朝相遇,她,他,他们又会擦出怎样的火花?小说交流群:医手遮天:废柴大小姐490396447大家一起讨论!么么哒!
  • 巧克力少女心

    巧克力少女心

    申佳宜在六岁的时候,父母抱回来一个和她一样大的哥哥,从此,她有了第二个哥哥。
  • 武林大爆炸

    武林大爆炸

    真功夫从来不怕传,拳术本身不存在高低,差的是人。崔山鹰年少习武,一生无败绩!斗天下,战擂台,见生死,北名南扬,血雨腥风铸造一代形意宗师之路!
  • EXO你的阳光

    EXO你的阳光

    我的错,此文不弃,我会努力更的,不喜勿喷。
  • 一霎微雨洒庭轩我的1986

    一霎微雨洒庭轩我的1986

    死生契阔,与子成说。执子之手,与子偕老。就是这句唯美诗词让天下有情人相遇相知相守一生,人之初性本善又有多少人为了世间这难得的真爱,骨肉相残,魔性大发,攻心斗角,这种方式换来的爱情是否能白头偕老,相濡以沫一生?康熙十三年,天下太平,繁荣盛世,她,蕙质兰心、亭亭玉立,四书五经,琴棋书画,诗词歌赋,无一不通。她,天真烂漫,性格倔强,四书五经,诗词歌赋她是一窍不通,唯一与她有缘的就是琴棋书画,三岁就能吟诗,五岁就能下的一首好棋。八岁时她的琴艺已经传遍京城,他们姐妹是商人之女,却偶然与皇上相遇,引发了一场旷世奇缘,可爱情里容不下第三个人,皇上的一旨赐婚却断送了自己的真爱,最终何去何从?
  • 血脉之灵王

    血脉之灵王

    主角是一個名叫海生的男孩丶他的命運多舛卻不凡,从一个笨笨的男孩,變成无比強大的帅氣男神,拥有神奇無比的魔法,一揮手便統冶半天下。
  • 掌上花开

    掌上花开

    《掌上花开》本书收录了宗利华的小小说作品,分为作品荟萃、作品评论、创作心得和创作年表四部分。作品立意深刻,构思巧妙,情节曲折,于质朴中见幽默,于调侃中见温情,于娓娓叙述中蕴含人生哲理,展现了作者对生活的深厚体验和独特思考,对广大读者和写作者有着极其特殊的启悟意义。
  • 鬼夫出棺:逃婚99世

    鬼夫出棺:逃婚99世

    出差多日的男朋友突然回来,却跟之前判若两人,而我也接到通知,尼泊尔发生泥石流,所有的人无一生还,得罪我的人一个接一个的死去,现场都留下一封相同的神秘信,原来枕边人居然是……