She thought, too, that if Carreen had the sense of a mouse she would see that Will cared for her. Scarlett would have been eternally grateful to Will, had he asked her for Carreen's hand. Of course, before the war, Will would certainly not have been an eligible suitor. He was not of the planter class at all, though he was not poor white. He was just plain Cracker, a small farmer, half-educated, prone to grammatical errors and ignorant of some of the finer manners the O'Haras were accustomed to in gentlemen. In fact, Scarlett wondered if he could be called a gentleman at all and decided that he couldn't. Melanie hotly defended him, saying that anyone who had Will's kind heart and thoughtfulness of others was of gentle birth. Scarlett knew that Ellen would have fainted at the thought of a daughter of hers marrying such a man, but now Scarlett had been by necessity forced too far away from Ellen's teachings to let that worry her. Men were scarce, girls had to marry someone and Tara had to have a man. But Carreen, deeper and deeper immersed in her prayer book and every day losing more of her touch with the world of realities, treated Will as gently as a brother and took him as much for granted as she did Pork.
"If Carreen had any sense of gratitude to me for what I've done for her, she'd marry him and not let him get away from here," Scarlett thought indignantly. "But no, she must spend her time mooning about a silly boy who probably never gave her a serious thought."
So Will remained at Tara, for what reason she did not know and she found his businesslike man-to-man attitude with her both pleasant and helpful. He was gravely deferential to the vague Gerald but it was to Scarlett that he turned as the real head of the house.
She gave her approval to the plan of hiring out the horse even though it meant the family would be without any means of transportation temporarily. Suellen would be especially grieved at this. Her greatest joy lay in going to Jonesboro or Fayetteville with Will when he drove over on business. Adorned in the assembled best of the family, she called on old friends, heard all the gossip of the County and felt herself again Miss O'Hara of Tara. Suellen never missed the opportunity to leave the plantation and give herself airs among people who did not know she weeded the garden and made beds.
Miss Fine Airs will just have to do without gadding for two weeks, thought Scarlett, and we'll have to put up with her nagging and her bawling.
Melanie joined them on the veranda, the baby in her arms, and spreading an old blanket on the floor, set little Beau down to crawl. Since Ashley's letter Melanie had divided her time between glowing, singing happiness and anxious longing. But happy or depressed, she was too thin, too white. She did her share of the work uncomplainingly but she was always ailing. Old Dr. Fontaine diagnosed her trouble as female complaint and concurred with Dr. Meade in saying she should never have had Beau. And he said frankly that another baby would kill her.
"When I was over to Fayetteville today," said Will, "I found somethin' right cute that I thought would interest you ladies and I brought it home." He fumbled in his back pants pocket and brought out the wallet of calico, stiffened with bark, which Carreen had made him. From it, he drew a Confederate bill.
"If you think Confederate money is cute, Will, I certainly don't," said Scarlett shortly, for the very sight of Confederate money made her mad. "We've got three thousand dollars of it in Pa's trunk this minute, and Mammy's after me to let her paste it over the holes in the attic walls so the draft won't get her. And I think I'll do it. Then it'll be good for something."
" 'Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,' " said Melanie with a sad smile. "Don't do that, Scarlett. Keep it for Wade. He'll be proud of it some day."
"Well, I don't know nothin' about imperious Caesar," said Will, patiently, "but what I've got is in line with what you've just said about Wade, Miss Melly. It's a poem, pasted on the back of this bill. I know Miss Scarlett ain't much on poems but I thought this might interest her."
He turned the bill over. On its back was pasted a strip of coarse brown wrapping paper, inscribed in pale homemade ink. Will cleared his throat and read slowly and with difficulty.
"The name is 'Lines on the Back of a Confederate Note,' " he said.
"Representing nothing on God's earth now
And naught in the waters below it--
As the pledge of nation that's passed away
Keep it, dear friend, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale this trifle will tell
Of Liberty, born of patriots' dream,
Of a storm-cradled nation that fell."
"Oh, how beautiful! How touching!" cried Melanie. "Scarlett, you mustn't give the money to Mammy to paste in the attic. It's more than paper -- just like this poem said: 'The pledge of a nation that's passed away!' "
"Oh, Melly, don't be sentimental! Paper is paper and we've got little enough of it and I'm tired of hearing Mammy grumble about the cracks in the attic. I hope when Wade grows up I'll have plenty of greenbacks to give him instead of Confederate trash."
Will, who had been enticing little Beau across the blanket with the bill during this argument, looked up and, shading his eyes, glanced down the driveway.
"More company," he said, squinting in the sun. "Another soldier."
Scarlett followed his gaze and saw a familiar sight, a bearded man coming slowly up the avenue under the cedars, a man clad in a ragged mixture of blue and gray uniforms, head bowed tiredly, feet dragging slowly.
"I thought we were about through with soldiers," she said. "I hope this one isn't very hungry."
"He'll be hungry," said Will briefly.
Melanie rose.
"I'd better tell Dilcey to set an extra plate," she said, "and warn Mammy not to get the poor thing's clothes off his back too abruptly and --"
She stopped so suddenly that Scarlett turned to look at her. Melanie's thin hand was at her throat, clutching it as if it was torn with pain, and Scarlett could see the veins beneath the white skin throbbing swiftly. Her face went whiter and her brown eyes dilated enormously.