Scarlett obediently sat down before the tray, wondering if she would be able to get any food into her stomach and still have room to breathe.
Mammy plucked a large towel from the washstand and carefully tied it around Scarlett’s neck, spreading the white folds over her lap.
Scarlett began on the ham, because she liked ham, and forced it down.
“I wish to Heaven I was married,” she said resentfully as she attacked the yams with loathing. “I’m tired of everlastingly being unnatural and never doing anything I want to do.
I’m tired of acting like I don’t eat more than a bird, and walking when I want to run and saying I feel faint after a waltz, when I could dance for two days and never get tired.
I’m tired of saying,
‘How wonderful you are!’ to fool men who haven’t got one-half the sense I’ve got, and I’m tired of pretending I don’t know anything, so men can tell me things and feel important while they’re doing it... I can’t eat another bite.”
“Try a hot cake,” said Mammy inexorably.
“Why is it a girl has to be so silly to catch a husband?”
“Ah specs it’s kase gempmums doan know whut dey wants.
Dey jes’ knows whut dey thinks dey wants.
An’ givin’ dem whut dey thinks dey wants saves a pile of mizry an’ bein’ a ole maid.
An’ dey thinks dey wants mousy lil gals wid bird’s tastes an’ no sense at all.
It doan make a gempmum feel lak mahyin’ a lady ef he suspicions she got mo’ sense dan he has.”
“Don’t you suppose men get surprised after they’re married to find that their wives do have sense?”
“Well, it’s too late den.
Dey’s already mahied. ’sides, gempmums specs dey wives ter have sense.”
“Some day I’m going to do and say everything I want to do and say, and if people don’t like it I don’t care.”
“No, you ain’,” said Mammy grimly.
“Not while Ah got breaf.
You eat dem cakes.
Sop dem in de gravy, honey.”
“I don’t think Yankee girls have to act like such fools.
When we were at Saratoga last year, I noticed plenty of them acting like they had right good sense and in front of men, too.”
Mammy snorted.
“Yankee gals!
Yas’m, Ah guess dey speaks dey minds awright, but Ah ain’ noticed many of dem gittin’ proposed ter at Saratoga.”
“But Yankees must get married,” argued Scarlett.
“They don’t just grow.
They must get married and have children. There’s too many of them.”
“Men mahys dem fer dey money,” said Mammy firmly.
Scarlett sopped the wheat cake in the gravy and put it in her mouth.
Perhaps there was something to what Mammy said.
There must be something in it, for Ellen said the same things, in different and more delicate words.
In fact, the mothers of all her girl friends impressed on their daughters the necessity of being helpless, clinging, doe-eyed creatures.
Really, it took a lot of sense to cultivate and hold such a pose.
Perhaps she had been too brash.
Occasionally she had argued with Ashley and frankly aired her opinions.
Perhaps this and her healthy enjoyment of walking and riding had turned him from her to the frail Melanie.
Perhaps if she changed her tactics-But she felt that if Ashley succumbed to premeditated feminine tricks, she could never respect him as she now did.
Any man who was fool enough to fall for a simper, a faint and an
“Oh, how wonderful you are!” wasn’t worth having.
But they all seemed to like it.
If she had used the wrong tactics with Ashley in the past—well, that was the past and done with.
Today she would use different ones, the right ones.
She wanted him and she had only a few hours in which to get him. If fainting, or pretending to faint, would do the trick, then she would faint.
If simpering, coquetry or empty-headedness would attract him, she would gladly play the flirt and be more empty-headed than even Cathleen Calvert.
And if bolder measures were necessary, she would take them.
Today was the day!
There was no one to tell Scarlett that her own personality, frighteningly vital though it was, was more attractive than any masquerade she might adopt.