Of course, she did not intend to tell her mother what was so heavy on her heart, for Ellen would be shocked and grieved to know that a daughter of hers wanted a man who was engaged to another girl. But, in the depths of the first tragedy she had ever known, she wanted the very comfort of her mother's presence.She always felt secure when Ellen was by her, for there was nothing so bad that Ellen could not better it, simply by being there.
She rose suddenly from her chair at the sound of creaking wheels in the driveway and then sank down again as they went on around the house to the back yard. It could not be Ellen, for she would alight at the front steps.Then there was an excited babble of negro voices in the darkness of the yard and high-pitched negro laughter.Looking out the window, Scarlett saw Pork, who had left the room a moment before, holding high a flaring pine knot, while indistinguishable figures descended from a wagon.The laughter and talking rose and fell in the dark night air, pleasant, homely, carefree sounds, gutturally soft, musically shrill.Then feet shuffled up the back-porch stairs and into the passageway leading to the main house, stopping in the hall just outside the dining room.There was a brief interval of whispering, and Pork entered, hisusual dignity gone, his eyes rolling and his white teeth a-gleam.
“Mist'Gerald,”he announced, breathing hard, the pride of a bridegroom all over his shining face,“yo'new'oman done come.”
“New woman?I didn't buy any new woman,”declared Gerald, pretending to glare.
“Yassah, you did, Mist'Gerald!Yassah!An'she out hyah now wantin'ter speak wid you,”answered Pork, giggling and twisting his hands in excitement.
“Well, bring in the bride,”said Gerald, and Pork, turning, beckoned into the hall to his wife, newly arrived from the Wilkes plantation to become a part of the household of Tara. She entered, and behind her, almost hidden by her voluminous calico skirts, came her twelve-year-old daughter, squirming against her mother's legs.
Dilcey was tall and bore herself erectly. She might have been any age from thirty to sixty, so unlined was her immobile bronze face.Indian blood was plain in her features, overbalancing the negroid characteristics.The red color of her skin, narrow high forehead, prominent cheek bones and the hawk-bridged nose which flattened at the end above thick negro lips, all showed the mixture of two races.She was self-possessed and walked with a dignity that surpassed even Mammy's, for Mammy had acquired her dignity and Dilcey's was in her blood.
When she spoke, her voice was not so slurred as most negroes'and she chose her words more carefully.
“Good evenin',young Misses. Mist'Gerald, I is sorry to'sturb you, but I wanted to come here and thank you, agin fo'buyin'me and my chile.Lots of gentlemens might a'bought me but they wouldn't a'bought my Prissy, too, jes'to keep me frum grivin’and I thanks you.I'm gwine do my bes'fo'you and show you I ain't forgettin'。”
“Hum—hurrump,”said Gerald, clearing his throat in embarrassment at being caught openly in an act of kindness.
Dilcey turned to Scarlett and something like a smile wrinkled the corners of her eyes.“Miss Scarlett, Poke done tole me how you ast Mist'Gerald to buy me. And so I'm gwine give you my Prissy fo'yo'own maid.”
She reached behind her and jerked the little girl forward. She was a brown little creature, with skinny legs like a bird and a myriad of pigtails carefullywrapped with twine sticking stiffly out from her head.She had sharp, knowing eyes that missed nothing and a studiedly stupid look on her face.
“Thank you, Dilcey,”Scarlett replied,“but I'm afraid Mammy will have something to say about that. She's been my maid ever since I was born.”
“Mammy gettin'ole,”said Dilcey, with a calmness that would have enraged Mammy.“She a good mammy, but you a young lady now and needs a good maid, and my Prissy been maidin'fo'Miss India fo'a year now. She kin sew and fix hair good as a grown pusson.”
Prodded by her mother, Prissy bobbed a sudden curtsy and grinned at Scarlett, who could not help grinning back.
“A sharp little wench,”she thought, and said aloud:“Thank you, Dilcey, we'll see about it when Mother comes home.”
“Thank'ee, Ma'm. I gives you good night,”said Dilcey and, turning, left the room with her child, Pork dancing attendance.
The supper things cleared away, Gerald resumed his oration, but with little satisfaction to himself and none at all to his audience. His thunderous predictions of immediate war and his rhetorical questions as to whether the South would stand for further insults from the Yankees only produced faintly bored,“Yes, Papas”and“No, Pas.”Carreen, sitting on a hassock under the big lamp, was deep in the romance of a girl who had taken the veil after her lover's death and, with silent tears of enjoyment oozing from her eyes, was pleasurably picturing herself in a white coil.Suellen, embroidering on what she gigglingly called her“hope chest,”was wondering if she could possibly detach Stuart Tarleton from her sister's side at the barbecue tomorrow and fascinate him with the sweet womanly qualities which she possessed and Scarlett did not.And Scarlett was in a tumult about Ashley.
How could Pa talk on and on about Fort Sumter and the Yankees when he knew her heart was breaking?As usual in the very young, she marveled that people could be so selfishly oblivious to her pain and the world rock along just the same, in spite of her heartbreak.
