Swarms of children, black and white, ran yelling about the newly green lawn, playing hopscotch and tag and boasting how much they were going to eat.
The wide hall which ran from front to back of the house was swarming with people, and as the O’Hara carriage drew up at the front steps, Scarlett saw girls in crinolines, bright as butterflies, going up and coming down the stairs from the second floor, arms about each other’s waists, stopping to lean over the delicate handrail of the banisters, laughing and calling to young men in the hall below them.
Through the open French windows, she caught glimpses of the older women seated in the drawing room, sedate in dark silks as they sat fanning themselves and talking of babies and sicknesses and who had married whom and why.
The Wilkes butler, Tom, was hurrying through the halls, a silver tray in his hands, bowing and grinning, as he offered tall glasses to young men in fawn and gray trousers and fine ruffled linen shirts.
The sunny front veranda was thronged with guests.
Yes, the whole County was here, thought Scarlett.
The four Tarleton boys and their father leaned against the tall columns, the twins, Stuart and Brent, side by side inseparable as usual, Boyd and Tom with their father, James Tarleton.
Mr. Calvert was standing close by the side of his Yankee wife, who even after fifteen years in Georgia never seemed to quite belong anywhere.
Everyone was very polite and kind to her because he felt sorry for her, but no one could forget that she had compounded her initial error of birth by being the governess of Mr. Calvert’s children.
The two Calvert boys, Raiford and Cade, were there with their dashing blonde sister, Cathleen, teasing the dark-faced Joe Fontaine and Sally Munroe, his pretty bride-to-be.
Alex and Tony Fontaine were whispering in the ears of Dimity Munroe and sending her into gales of giggles.
There were families from as far as Lovejoy, ten miles away, and from Fayetteville and Jonesboro, a few even from Atlanta and Macon.
The house seemed bursting with the crowd, and a ceaseless babble of talking and laughter and giggles and shrill feminine squeaks and screams rose and fell.
On the porch steps stood John Wilkes, silver-haired, erect, radiating the quiet charm and hospitality that was as warm and never failing as the sun of Georgia summer.
Beside him Honey Wilkes, so called because she indiscriminately addressed everyone from her father to the field hands by that endearment, fidgeted and giggled as she called greetings to the arriving guests.
Honey’s nervously obvious desire to be attractive to every man in sight contrasted sharply with her father’s poise, and Scarlett had the thought that perhaps there was something in what Mrs. Tarleton said, after all.
Certainly the Wilkes men got the family looks.
The thick deep-gold lashes that set off the gray eyes of John Wilkes and Ashley were sparse and colorless in the faces of Honey and her sister India.
Honey had the odd lashless look of a rabbit, and India could be described by no other word than plain.
India was nowhere to be seen, but Scarlett knew she probably was in the kitchen giving final instructions to the servants.
Poor India, thought Scarlett, she’s had so much trouble keeping house since her mother died that she’s never had the chance to catch any beau except Stuart Tarleton, and it certainly wasn’t my fault if he thought I was prettier than she.
John Wilkes came down the steps to offer his arm to Scarlett.
As she descended from the carriage, she saw Suellen smirk and knew that she must have picked out Frank Kennedy in the crowd.
If I couldn’t catch a better beau than that old maid in britches! she thought contemptuously, as she stepped to the ground and smiled her thanks to John Wilkes.
Frank Kennedy was hurrying to the carriage to assist Suellen, and Suellen was bridling in a way that made Scarlett want to slap her.
Frank Kennedy might own more land than anyone in the County and he might have a very kind heart, but these things counted for nothing against the fact that he was forty, slight and nervous and had a thin ginger-colored beard and an old-maidish, fussy way about him.
However, remembering her plan, Scarlett smothered her contempt and cast such a flashing smile of greeting at him that he stopped short, his arm outheld to Suellen and goggled at Scarlett in pleased bewilderment.
Scarlett’s eyes searched the crowd for Ashley, even while she made pleasant small talk with John Wilkes, but he was not on the porch.
There were cries of greeting from a dozen voices and Stuart and Brent Tarleton moved toward her.
The Munroe girls rushed up to exclaim over her dress, and she was speedily the center of a circle of voices that rose higher and higher in efforts to be heard above the din.
But where was Ashley?
And Melanie and Charles?
She tried not to be obvious as she looked about and peered down the hall into the laughing group inside.
As she chattered and laughed and cast quick glances into the house and the yard, her eyes fell on a stranger, standing alone in the hall, staring at her in a cool impertinent way that brought her up sharply with a mingled feeling of feminine pleasure that she had attracted a man and an embarrassed sensation that her dress was too low in the bosom.
He looked quite old, at least thirty-five. He was a tall man and powerfully built.
Scarlett thought she had never seen a man with such wide shoulders, so heavy with muscles, almost too heavy for gentility.
When her eye caught his, he smiled, showing animal-white teeth below a close-clipped black mustache.
He was dark of face, swarthy as a pirate, and his eyes were as bold and black as any pirate’s appraising a galleon to be scuttled or a maiden to be ravished.
There was a cool recklessness in his face and a cynical humor in his mouth as he smiled at her, and Scarlett caught her breath.
She felt that she should be insulted by such a look and was annoyed with herself because she did not feel insulted.
She did not know who he could be, but there was undeniably a look of good blood in his dark face. It showed in the thin hawk nose over the full red lips, the high forehead and the wide-set eyes.
She dragged her eyes away from his without smiling back, and he turned as someone called:
“Rhett!
Rhett Butler!
Come here!
I want you to meet the most hardhearted girl in Georgia.”
Rhett Butler?
The name had a familiar sound, somehow connected with something pleasantly scandalous, but her mind was on Ashley and she dismissed the thought.
“I must run upstairs and smooth my hair,” she told Stuart and Brent, who were trying to get her cornered from the crowd.
“You boys wait for me and don’t run off with any other girl or I’ll be furious.”