Finally the pallbearers set the coffin down near the grave and stood clenching and unclenching their aching fingers.Ashley,Melanie and Will filed into the inclosure and stood behind the O'Hara girls.All the closer neighbors who could crowd in were behind them and the others stood outside the brick wall.Scarlett,really seeing them for the first time,was surprised and touched by the size of the crowd.With transportation so limited it was kind of so many to come.There were fifty or sixty people there,some of them from so far away she wondered how they had heard in time to come.There were whole families from Jonesboro and Fayetteville and Lovejoy and with them a few negro servants.Many small farmers from far across the river were present and Crackers from the backwoods and a scattering of swamp folk.The swamp men were lean bearded giants in homespun,coon-skin caps on their heads,their rifles easy in the crooks of their arms,their wads of tobacco stilled in their cheeks.Their women were with them,their bare feet sunk in the soft earth,their lower lips full of snuff.Their faces beneath their sun-bonnets were sallow and malarial-looking but shining clean and their freshly ironed calicoes glistened with starch.
The near neighbors were there in full force.Grandma Fontaine,withered,wrinkled and yellow as an old molted bird,was leaning on her cane,and behind her were Sally Munroe Fontaine and Young Miss Fontaine.They were trying vainly by whispered pleas and jerks at her skirt to make the old lady sit down on the brick wall.Grandma's husband,the Old Doctor,was not there.He had died two months before and much of the bright malicious joy of life had gone from her old eyes.Cathleen Calvert Hilton stood alone as befitted one whose husband had helped bring about the present tragedy,her faded sunbonnet hiding her bowed face.Scarlett saw with amazement that her percale dress had grease spots on it and her hands were freckled and unclean.There were even black crescents under her fingernails.There was nothing of quality folks about Cathleen now.She looked Cracker,even worse.She looked poor white,shiftless,slovenly,trifling.
“She'll be dipping snuff soon,if she isn't doing it already,”thought Scarlett in horror.“Good Lord!What a comedown!”
She shuddered,turning her eyes from Cathleen as she realized how narrow was the chasm between quality folk and poor whites.
“There but for a lot of gumption am I,”she thought,and pride surged through her as she realized that she and Cathleen had started with the same equipment after the surrender—empty hands and what they had in their heads.
“I haven't done so bad,”she thought,lifting her chin and smiling.
But she stopped in mid-smile as she saw the scandalized eyes of Mrs.Tarleton upon her.Her eyes were red-rimmed from tears and,after giving Scarlett a reproving look,she turned her gaze back to Suellen,a fierce angry gaze that boded ill for her.Behind her and her husband were the four Tarleton girls,their red locks indecorous notes in the solemn occasion,their russet eyes still looking like the eyes of vital young animals,spirited and dangerous.
Feet were stilled,hats were removed,hands folded and skirts rustled into quietness as Ashley stepped forward with Carreen's worn Book of Devotions in his hand.He stood for a moment looking down,the sun glittering on his golden head.A deep silence fell on the crowd,so deep that the harsh whisper of the wind in the magnolia leaves came clear to their ears and the far-off repetitious note of a mockingbird sounded unendurably loud and sad.Ashley began to read the prayers and all heads bowed as his resonant,beautifully modulated voice rolled out the brief and dignified words.
“Oh!”thought Scarlett,her throat constricting.“How beautiful his voice is!If anyone has to do this for Pa,I'm glad it's Ashley.I'd rather have him than a priest.I'd rather have Pa buried by one of his own folks than a stranger.”
When Ashley came to the part of the prayers concerning the souls in Purgatory,which Carreen had marked for him to read,he abruptly closed the book.Only Carreen noticed the omission and looked up puzzled,as he began the Lord's Prayer.Ashley knew that half the people present had never heard of Purgatory and those who had would take it as a personal affront,if he insinuated,even in prayer,that so fine a man as Mr.O'Hara had not gone straight to Heaven.So,in deference to public opinion,he skipped all mention of Purgatory.The gathering joined heartily in the Lord's Prayer but their voices trailed off into embarrassed silence when he began the Hail Mary.They had never heard that prayer and they looked furtively at each other as the O'Hara girls,Melanie and the Tara servants gave the response:“Pray for us,now and at the hour of our death.Amen.”
Then Ashley raised his head and stood for a moment,uncertain.The eyes of the neighbors were expectantly upon him as they settled themselves in easier positions for a long harangue.They were waiting for him to go on with the service,for it did not occur to any of them that he was at the end of the Catholic prayers.County funerals were always long.The Baptist and Methodist ministers who performed them had no set prayers but extemporized as the circumstances demanded and seldom stopped before all mourners were in tears and the bereaved feminine relatives screaming with grief.The neighbors would have been shocked,aggrieved and indignant,had these brief prayers been all the service over the body of their loved friend,and no one knew this better than Ashley.The matter would be discussed at dinner tables for weeks and the opinion of the County would be that the O'Hara girls had not shown proper respect for their father.
So he threw a quick apologetic glance at Carreen and,bowing his head again,began reciting from memory the Episcopal burial service which he had often read over slaves buried at Twelve Oaks.
