They’re fine lads, but if it’s Cade Calvert you’re setting your cap after, why, ’tis the same with me.
The Calverts are good folk, all of them, for all the old man marrying a Yankee.
And when I’m gone—Whist, darlin', listen to me!
I’ll leave Tara to you and Cade—”
“I wouldn’t have Cade on a silver tray,” cried Scarlett in fury.
“And I wish you’d quit pushing him at me!
I don’t want Tara or any old plantation.
Plantations don’t amount to anything when—”
She was going to say “when you haven’t the man you want,” but Gerald, incensed by the cavalier way in which she treated his proffered gift, the thing which, next to Ellen, he loved best in the whole world uttered a roar.
“Do you stand there, Scarlett O’Hara, and tell me that Tara—that land—doesn’t amount to anything?”
Scarlett nodded obstinately.
Her heart was too sore to care whether or not she put her father in a temper.
“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything,” he shouted, his thick, short arms making wide gestures of indignation, “for ’tis the only thing in this world that lasts, and don’t you be forgetting it! ’tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for.”
“Oh, Pa,” she said disgustedly, “you talk like an Irishman!”
“Have I ever been ashamed of it?
No, ’tis proud I am.
And don’t be forgetting that you are half Irish, Miss!
And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. ’tis ashamed of you I am this minute.
I offer you the most beautiful land in the world—saving County Meath in the Old Country—and what do you do?
You sniff!”
Gerald had begun to work himself up into a pleasurable shouting rage when something in Scarlett’s woebegone face stopped him.
“But there, you’re young.
‘Twill come to you, this love of land.
There’s no getting away from it, if you’re Irish.
You’re just a child and bothered about your beaux.
When you’re older, you’ll be seeing how ’tis... Now, do you be making up your mind about Cade or the twins or one of Evan Munroe’s young bucks, and see how fine I turn you out!”
“Oh, Pa!”
By this time, Gerald was thoroughly tired of the conversation and thoroughly annoyed that the problem should be upon his shoulders.
He felt aggrieved, moreover, that Scarlett should still look desolate after being offered the best of the County boys and Tara, too.
Gerald liked his gifts to be received with clapping of hands and kisses.
“Now, none of your pouts, Miss.
It doesn’t matter who you marry, as long as he thinks like you and is a gentleman and a Southerner and prideful.
For a woman, love comes after marriage.”
“Oh, Pa, that’s such an Old Country notion!”
“And a good notion it is!
All this American business of running around marrying for love, like servants, like Yankees!
The best marriages are when the parents choose for the girl.
For how can a silly piece like yourself tell a good man from a scoundrel?
Now, look at the Wilkes.
What’s kept them prideful and strong all these generations?
Why, marrying the likes of themselves, marrying the cousins their family always expects them to marry.”
“Oh,” cried Scarlett, fresh pain striking her as Gerald’s words brought home the terrible inevitability of the truth.
Gerald looked at her bowed head and shuffled his feet uneasily.
“It’s not crying you are?” he questioned, fumbling clumsily at her chin, trying to turn her face upward, his own face furrowed with pity.
“No,” she cried vehemently, jerking away.
“It’s lying you are, and I’m proud of it.
I’m glad there’s pride in you, Puss.
And I want to see pride in you tomorrow at the barbecue.
I’ll not be having the County gossiping and laughing at you for mooning your heart out about a man who never gave you a thought beyond friendship.”
“He did give me a thought,” thought Scarlett, sorrowfully in her heart.