They were a pleasant race, these coastal Georgians, and Gerald liked them. From them he learned what he found useful. Poker and a steady head for whisky brought to Gerald two of his three most prized possessions, his valet and his plantation. The other was his wife, the mysterious kindness of God.
Gerald wanted to be a slave owner and a landed gentleman. So the possession of Pork, his first slave, who became his valet, was the first step toward his heart’s desire.
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.
With his own small stake 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 former owner’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 to buy more slaves. 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 building overlooking the green pasture land running down to the river; and it pleased Gerald greatly. The old oaks hugged the house closely with their great trunks. The lawn grew thick with clover and grass, and Gerald saw to it that it was well kept. 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.
Gerald was on excellent terms with all his neighbors in the County, except the MacIntoshes whose land was on his left and the Slatterys whose three acres stretched on his right along the swamp bottoms between the river and John Wilkes’ plantation.
With all the rest of the County, Gerald was on terms of amity. The Wilkeses, the Calverts, the Tarletons, the Fontaines, all smiled when the small figure on the big white horse galloped up their driveways. Gerald was likable, and soon the neighbors learned what the children, negroes and dogs discovered at first sight, that a kind heart, a ready and sympathetic ear and an open pocketbook were behind his loud voice and his rude manner.
When Gerald was forty-three, 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 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, badly mended by the chambermaid.
“Mist’ Gerald,” said Pork, as Gerald fumed, “whut you needs is a wife.”
Gerald knew that Pork 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. His wife must be a lady of blood, with as many airs and graces[15] as Mrs. Wilkes and the ability to manage Tara as well as Mrs. Wilkes.
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” and a foreigner. No one knew anything about his family.
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.
“Pack up. We’re going to Savannah,” he told Pork.
James and Andrew, Gerald’s brothers, who now lived in Savannah, had left Ireland long before. They 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.
“You old enough to be her father! And the girl wouldn’t have you anyway,” interposed Andrew. “She’s been in love with that cousin of hers, Philippe Robillard, for a year now.”
“He’s been gone to Louisiana this month now,” said Gerald.
“And how do you know?”
“I know,” answered Gerald, who did not want to tell that Pork had supplied this valuable information, or that Philippe had gone on the order 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 that the daughter of Pierre Robillard was to marry the little Irishman from up the country. 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 when Ellen, very white but very calm, put a light hand on his arm and said: “I will marry you, Mr. O’Hara.”
Only Ellen and her mammy ever knew the whole story of the night when the girl sobbed till the dawn and rose up in the morning a woman with her mind made up.
With a bad feeling, Mammy had brought her young mistress a small package from New Orleans containing a miniature of Ellen, four letters in her own handwriting to Philippe Robillard, and a brief letter from a local priest, announcing the death of her cousin in a barroom brawl.
“They drove him away, Father and sisters. I hate them all. I never want to see them again. I will go away where I’ll never see them again, or this town, or anyone who reminds me of – of – him.”
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. If Ellen had ever regretted her sudden decision to marry Gerald, no one ever knew it, and north Georgia became her home.
At the time, the high tide of prosperity was rolling over the South. The world was crying out for cotton, and the new land of the County produced it abundantly. Cotton was the heartbeat of the region. Wealth came out of the furrows, and arrogance came too. If cotton could make them rich in one generation, how much richer they would be in the next!
This certainty of the morrow gave enthusiasm to life, and the County people enjoyed life with a heartiness that Ellen could never understand. They had money 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