Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром

It wasn’t fair! She was seventeen years old and her feet were patting the floor, wanting to dance.

Every girl in Atlanta could have a man. Even the plainest girls were carrying on like belles – and, oh, worst of all, they were wearing such lovely, lovely dresses!

Here she sat like a crow with black taffeta to her wrists and buttoned up to her chin, watching tacky-looking girls hanging on the arms of good-looking men. All because Charles Hamilton had had the measles. He didn’t even die in battle, so she could brag about him.

She leaned her elbows on the counter and looked at the crowd.

For a brief moment she considered the unfairness of it all. How short was the time for fun, for pretty clothes, for dancing, for coquetting! Only a few, too few years! Then you married and wore dull-colored dresses and only emerged to dance with your husband or with old gentlemen who stepped on your feet. If you didn’t do these things, the other matrons talked about you and then your reputation was ruined and your family disgraced.

How wonderful it would be never to marry but to go on being lovely in pale green dresses and forever courted by handsome men. But, if you went on too long, you got to be an old maid and everyone said “poor thing” in that hateful way. No, after all it was better to marry and keep your self-respect even if you never had any more fun.

Oh, what a mess life was! Why had she been such an idiot as to marry Charles of all people and have her life end at sixteen?

There were crowds in front of every other counter but theirs, girls chattering, men buying.

The few who came to them talked about how they went to the university with Ashley and what a fine soldier he was or spoke in respectful tones of Charles and how great a loss to Atlanta his death had been.

Then the music broke into the sounds of “Johnny Booker, he’p dis Nigger!” and Scarlett thought she would scream. She wanted to dance.

She looked across the floor and tapped her foot to the music and her green eyes blazed eagerly. All the way across the floor, a man, newly come and standing in the doorway, saw them and started in recognition. Then he grinned to himself as he recognized the invitation that any male could read.

He was a tall man, towering over the officers who stood near him. And he stared at Scarlett, until finally, feeling his gaze, she looked toward him.