Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром

”

“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.

“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.

“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.

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.