1、Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 1The Greatest Love Story of All Time. GONE WITH THE WIND “A REMARKABLE BOOK, A SPECTACULAR BOOK, A BOOK THAT WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN!” Chicago Tribune Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 2GONE WITH THE WIND MARGARET MITCHELL WARNER BOOKS A Time Warner Company Marg
2、aret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 3TO J.R.M. Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 4If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has
3、received any payment for this “stripped book.” WARNER BOOKS EDITION Copyright 1936 by The Macmillan Company Copyright renewed 1964 by Stephens Mitchell and Trust Company of Georgia as Executors of Margaret Mitchell Marsh. Copyright renewed 1964 by Stephens Mitchell. All rights reserved, which includ
4、es the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law. For information address the Macmillan Company, 866 Third Avenue, New York, New York 10022. Published by arrangement with the Macmillan Publishing Company. Cover design by Jack
5、ie Merri Meyer Cover illustration 1939 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved. Hand lettering by Carl Dellacroce Warner Books, Inc. 1271 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 Visit our Web site at http:/ A Time Warner Company Printed in the United States of America First Warner Books Print
6、ing: August, 1993 15 14 13 12 11 Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 5Part One CHAPTER I SCARLETT OHARA was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. In her face were too sharply blended the delicate features of her mother, a Coast aristocrat of
7、French descent, and the heavy ones of her florid Irish father. But it was an arresting face, pointed of chin, square of jaw. Her eyes were pale green without a touch of hazel, starred with bristly black lashes and slightly tilted at the ends. Above them, her thick black brows slanted upward, cutting
8、 a startling oblique line in her magnolia-white skinthat skin so prized by Southern women and so carefully guarded with bonnets, veils and mittens against hot Georgia suns. Seated with Stuart and Brent Tarleton in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her fathers plantation, that bright April afterno
9、on of 1861, she made a pretty picture. Her new green flowered-muslin dress spread its twelve yards of billowing material over her hoops and exactly matched the flat-heeled green morocco slippers her father had recently brought her from Atlanta. The dress set off to perfection the seventeen-inch wais
10、t, the smallest in three counties, and the tightly fitting basque showed breasts well matured for her sixteen years. But for all the modesty of her spreading skirts, the demureness of hair netted smoothly into a chignon and the quietness of small white hands folded in her lap, her true self was poor
11、ly concealed. The green eyes in the carefully sweet face were turbulent, willful, lusty with life, distinctly at variance with her decorous demeanor. Her manners had been imposed upon her by her mothers gentle admonitions and the sterner discipline of her mammy; her eyes were her own. On either side
12、 of her, the twins lounged easily in their chairs, squinting at the sunlight through tall mint-garnished glasses as they laughed and talked, their long legs, booted to the knee and thick with saddle muscles, crossed negligently. Nineteen years old, six feet two inches tall, long of bone and hard of
13、muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, their bodies clothed in identical blue coats and mustard-colored breeches, they were as much alike as two bolls of cotton. Outside, the late afternoon sun slanted down in the yard, throwing into gleaming brightness the
14、 dogwood trees that were solid masses of white blossoms against the background of new green. The twins horses were hitched in the driveway, big Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 6animals, red as their masters hair; and around the horses legs quarreled the pack of lean, nervous possum hounds that
15、accompanied Stuart and Brent wherever they went. A little aloof, as became an aristocrat, lay a black-spotted carriage dog, muzzle on paws, patiently waiting for the boys to go home to supper. Between the hounds and the horses and the twins there was a kinship deeper than that of their constant comp
16、anionship. They were all healthy, thoughtless young animals, sleek, graceful, high-spirited, the boys as mettlesome as the horses they rode, mettlesome and dangerous but, withal, sweet-tempered to those who knew how to handle them. Although born to the ease of plantation life, waited on hand and foo
17、t since infancy, the faces of the three on the porch were neither slack nor soft. They had the vigor and alertness of country people who have spent all their lives in the open and troubled their heads very little with dull things in books. Life in the north Georgia county of Clayton was still new an
18、d, according to the standards of Au-gusta, Savannah and Charleston, a little crude. The more sedate and older sections of the South looked down their noses at the up-country Georgians, but here in north Georgia, a lack of the niceties of classical education carried no shame, provided a man was smart
19、 in the things that mattered. And raising good cotton, riding well, shooting straight, dancing lightly, squiring the ladies with elegance and carrying ones liquor like a gentleman were the things that mattered. In these accomplishments the twins excelled, and they were equally outstanding in their n
20、otorious inability to learn anything contained between the covers of books. Their family had more money, more horses, more slaves than any one else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor Cracker neighbors. It was for this precise reason that Stuart and Brent were idling
21、 on the porch of Tara this April afternoon. They had just been expelled from the University of Georgia, the fourth university that had thrown them out in two years; and their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were
22、not welcome. Stuart and Brent considered their latest expulsion a fine joke, and Scarlett, who had not willingly opened a book since leaving the Fayetteville Female Academy the year before, thought it just as amusing as they did. “I know you two dont care about being expelled, or Tom either,” she sa
23、id. “But what about Boyd? Hes kind of set on getting an education, and you two have pulled him out of the University of Virginia and Alabama and South Carolina and now Georgia. Hell never get finished at this rate.” “Oh, he can read law in Judge Parmalees office over in Fayetteville,” answered Brent
24、 carelessly. “Besides, it dont matter much. Wed have had to come home before the term was out anyway.” Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 7“Why?” “The war, goose! The wars going to start any day, and you dont suppose any of us would stay in college with a war going on, do you?” “You know there isn
25、t going to be any war,” said Scarlett, bored. “Its all just talk. Why, Ashley Wilkes and his father told Pa just last week that our commissioners in Washington would come totoanamicable agreement with Mr. Lincoln about the Confederacy. And anyway, the Yankees are too scared of us to fight. There won
26、t be any war, and Im tired of hearing about it.” “Not going to be any war!” cried the twins indignantly, as though they had been defrauded. “Why, honey, of course theres going to be a war,” said Stuart. The Yankees may be scared of us, but after the way General Beauregard shelled them out of Fort Su
27、mter day before yesterday, theyll have to fight or stand branded as cowards before the whole world. Why, the Confederacy” Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience. If you say war just once more, Ill go in the house and shut the door. Ive never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as war, unle
28、ss its secession. Pa talks war morning, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Fort Sumter and States Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And thats all the boys talk about, too, that and their old Troop. There hasnt been any fun at any party this
29、 spring because the boys cant talk about anything else. Im mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say war again, Ill go in the house.” She meant what she said, for she could never long endure any conversation of wh
30、ich she was not the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies wings. The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her. They thought none the le
31、ss of her for her lack of interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was mens business, not ladies, and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity. Having maneuvered them away from the boring subject of war, she went back with interest to their immediate situation. “What did your mother say
32、about you two being expelled again?” The boys looked uncomfortable, recalling their mothers conduct three months ago when they had come home, by request, from the University of Virginia. “Well,” said Stuart, “she hasnt had a chance to say anything yet. Tom and us left home early this morning before
33、she got up, and Toms laying out over at the Fontaines while we came over here.” “Didnt she say anything when you got home last night?” Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 8“We were in luck last night. Just before we got home that new stallion Ma got in Kentucky last month was brought in, and the pl
34、ace was in a stew. The big brutehes a grand horse, Scarlett; you must tell your pa to come over and see him right awayhed already bitten a hunk out of his groom on the way down here and hed trampled two of Mas darkies who met the train at Jonesboro. And just before we got home, hed about kicked the
35、stable down and half-killed Strawberry, Mas old stallion. When we got home, Ma was out in the stable with a sackful of sugar smoothing him down and doing it mighty well, too. The darkies were hanging from the rafters, popeyed, they were so scared, but Ma was talking to the horse like he was folks an
36、d he was eating out of her hand. There aint nobody like Ma with a horse. And when she saw us she said: In Heavens name, what are you four doing home again? Youre worse than the plagues of Egypt! And then the horse began snorting and rearing and she said: Get out of here! Cant you see hes nervous, th
37、e big darling? Ill tend to you four in the morning! So we went to bed, and this morning we got away before she could catch us. and left Boyd to handle her.” “Do you suppose shell hit Boyd?” Scarlett, like the rest of the County, could never get used to the way small Mrs. Tarleton bullied her grown s
38、ons and laid her riding crop on their backs if the occasion seemed to warrant it. Beatrice Tarleton was a busy woman, having on her hands not only a large cotton plantation, a hundred negroes and eight children, but the largest horse-breeding farm in the state as well. She was hot-tempered and easil
39、y plagued by the frequent scrapes of her four sons, and while no one was permitted to whip a horse or a slave, she felt that a lick now and then didnt do the boys any harm. “Of course she wont hit Boyd. She never did beat Boyd much because hes the oldest and besides hes the runt of the litter,” said
40、 Stuart, proud of his six feet two. “Thats why we left him at home to explain things to her. Godlmighty, Ma ought to stop licking us! Were nineteen and Toms twenty-one, and she acts like were six years old.” “Will your mother ride the new horse to the Wilkes barbecue tomorrow?” “She wants to, but Pa
41、 says hes too dangerous. And, anyway, the girls wont let her. They said they were going to have her go to one party at least like a lady, riding in the carriage.” “I hope it doesnt rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett. “Its rained nearly every day for a week. Theres nothing worse than a barbecue turned int
42、o an indoor picnic.” “Oh, itll be clear tomorrow and hot as June,” said Stuart. “Look at Oat sunset I never saw one redder. You can always tell weather by sunsets.” They looked out across the endless acres of Gerald OHaras newly plowed cotton fields toward the red horizon. Now that the sun was setti
43、ng in a welter of crimson behind tin lulls across the Flint River, the warmth of the April day was ebbing into a faint but balmy chill. Margaret Mitchell GONE WITH THE WIND 9Spring had come early that year, with warm quick rains and sudden frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with wh
44、ite stars the dark river swamp and far-off hills. Already the plowing was nearly finished, and the bloody glory of the sunset colored the fresh-cut furrows of red Georgia clay to even redder hues. The moist hungry earth, waiting upturned for the cotton seeds, showed pinkish on the sandy tops of furr
45、ows, vermilion and scarlet and maroon where shadows lay along the sides of the trenches. The whitewashed brick plantation house seemed an island set in a wild red sea, a sea of spiraling, curving, crescent billows petrified suddenly at the moment when the pink-tipped waves were breaking into surf. F
46、or here were no long, straight furrows, such as could be seen in the yellow clay fields of the flat middle Georgia country or in the lush black earth of the coastal plantations. The rolling foothill country of north Georgia was plowed in a million curves to keep the rich earth from washing down into
47、 the river bottoms. It was a savagely red land, blood-colored after rains, brick dust in droughts, the best cotton land in the world. It was a pleasant land of white houses, peaceful plowed fields and sluggish yellow rivers, but a land of contrasts, of brightest sun glare and densest shade. The plan
48、tation clearings and miles of cotton fields smiled up to a warm sun, placid, complacent. At their edges rose the virgin forests, dark and cool even in the hottest noons, mysterious, a little sinister, the soughing pines seeming to wait with an age-old patience, to threaten with soft sighs: “Be caref
49、ul! Be careful! We had you once. We can take you back again.” To the ears of the three on the porch came the sounds of hooves, the jingling of harness chains and the shrill careless laughter of negro voices, as the field hands and mules came in from the fields. From within the house floated the soft voice of Scarletts mother, Ellen OHara, as she called to the little black girl who carried her basket of keys. The high-pitched, childish voice answered “Ya
