[Gone with the Wind] Back to the beginning

"No, I don't want to get married so soon." Scarlett repeated, blinking her beautiful green eyes.

Gerald had a headache. "But, my gem, you told that Hamilton boy last time - the sooner the better. We must not break our word..."

"I didn't say no!" Scarlett frowned her black eyebrows, looking just like her father in anger.

After thinking about it all night, Scarlett still decided to temporarily keep the engagement - after all, this is the only way for her to get close to Melanie now!

Even shortly before she was reborn, Scarlett treated the thin woman like a fool.How obvious she, Scarlett O'Hara, was for Ashley, that the fool had ignored her and thought of her as a good friend with all his heart.She helps her, protects her, defends her, and puts everything she does in a positive light.But the more Melanie was like this, the more disturbed Scarlett felt. It was such a woman who got Ashley!How could Scarlett be willing to do this!

Until—until Melanie passed away due to miscarriage and entrusted everything to her with a weak voice, Scarlett realized how important this humble woman was to her.She kept silent, but loyally guarded her side, giving her love and friendship.Melanie had always been her shield, her strength, her courage, and without Melanie, her gleaming sword, sheathed forever.

Scarlett would never leave Melanie alone in war-torn Atlanta.

But she had been able to live in Atlanta in the past only because she was the widow of Charles Hamilton, Melanie's brother.If this layer of engagement is removed, Melanie, who doesn't have much contact with her now, has no reason to invite her to Atlanta again, and Scarlett has no reason to prevent this from happening.Therefore, Scarlett finally chose to keep the engagement and postpone the wedding.

As for whether it was right to interfere with other people's fate, Scarlett would not consider it.She doesn't even have the concept at all.After all, despite having 12 years of experience, she is still the girl who is full of courage and doesn't like to use her brain.

"Stop messing around, girl, your father won't accept your tricks!" Gerald insisted that he would not agree, but his most beloved eldest daughter already knew that he had softened his heart!

"We can get engaged first, Dad. Think about it, how can I get married in such a hurry! In two weeks, Charles will be enlisting in the army. Two weeks, it is too late to prepare for a grand wedding, I will Don't just marry me!" Scarlett shook her father's arm, "We can definitely wait until the end of the war and let him wear a medal to marry me. That would be so beautiful! Anyway, Dad didn't say a few months Can we win?" Scarlett shrank suddenly when the war was mentioned.But she went on as if nothing had happened, she knew it would work.

Sure enough, Gerald hesitated. Of course he wanted to marry off his daughter in a grand manner, and he also wanted to have a son-in-law with a military medal, but because his daughter accepted the marriage proposal, he temporarily left the topic of the war yesterday, and talked happily with John Wilkes discussed it.The topic of the two has even touched on the grand occasion when two couples of young people got married together——

"If you don't agree, I'll tell mom about jumping the fence." Scarlett pouted her lips, as if to leave.

"Okay, okay, you kid will bully your old father." Gerald quickly agreed with a sad face.

"Charles and I got engaged the day after Melanie's wedding," Scarlett added.

"Come on, my lady!" Gerald said harshly, "I'll go and speak to your mother."

The rugged man didn't realize that what his daughter had just said was "Melanie's wedding" and not "Ashley's wedding."

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When Gerald went to Ellen and told about the postponement of the wedding, Scarlett herself began to hesitate again.She remembered clearly that Charles Hamilton had died early in the war.In his previous life, he left her a few valuable shops as inheritances!It's a pity that it was destroyed when Atlanta fell.If she—if she married her, and waited for him to die in peace, took over the inheritance, and found a way to get rid of it before Atlanta was destroyed, then, then, the tax money she had been worrying about keeping Tara would be settled ——For this tax money, she almost became Rhett's mistress!

This idea is too tempting, and it keeps circling in her mind, like the sweet-talking snake that tempted Eve.But Scarlett finally gritted her teeth and gave up.

In her previous life, after Frank Kennedy died, she cried to Rhett that if she had known that she would kill him, she would never have married him.She really thought so at the time.However, Rhett, who knew her best in the world, told her calmly, Scarlett, you will, even if you do it again, you will do it again.Because you asked for money at that time, and you couldn't find any other way to get it except him.Thinking of his expression when he spoke, Scarlett couldn't help shivering.Would she really marry Charles again for money, and coldly count his death on her fingers?

"No, Rhett, I won't." Scarlett muttered, she clenched her fists, "At that time, I thought I loved Ashley, but I couldn't get him. So for Tara, what would I do?" But now, the worst is far from befalling me, and I have a thousand ways to save myself from it. Besides, what I'm looking forward to now is—oh, thank God!"

Thank God for giving her the opportunity to make up for her past mistakes, so that she can welcome her true lover in a no longer embarrassed attitude.Thank God, this time she has enough time to prepare everything, and she doesn't have to push herself into the most desperate situation, and test the bottom line of survival again.She can also make many, many different choices.

Even at the end of her previous life, Scarlett, who was farther and farther away from the high society of Atlanta, still had the remnants of becoming a lady like her mother in her heart.Her conscience is still not clean, although now she will still feel sorry for letting go of this fortune.

"Oh, Rhett Butler! The damned speculator! I passed up such a good opportunity for him! Come on, I can figure out some other way to get the money and keep Tara!"

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Because of the war, Ashley and Melanie's wedding has been moved from the fall to May [-]st.Once support is needed in the war, he can leave with the battalion.

That night, in the living room of Twelve Oaks, with thousands of candles flickering, Melanie was jostled by the bustling guests, her face shining with happiness.Scarlett witnessed the happiest moment in the life of her best and only female friend in her previous life.

Meili was wearing a snow-white wedding dress, leaning against Ashley's side. The ruby ​​necklace around her neck made her cream-colored skin extraordinarily radiant, and the heavy earrings were hung with long thin gold chains. The sides of her neat hair dangled from her brown eyes.These eyes are like two quiet lakes in the winter forest, and the brown leaves are reflected in the waves of the lake.Her heart-shaped face is covered with black hair, and the whole person exudes a happy light.

The banquet at the Twelve Oaks looked grand and boisterous.Everyone laughed and laughed, taking it easy.This is a deep-rooted temperament in southerners, which comes from the confidence to know that tomorrow will enjoy the same happiness and tranquility as today.The days are quiet, long, beautiful and unchanging, only the banquet is more lively and joyful.Scarlett stood amidst all this with nostalgia, suppressing the surge of pain in her heart that these good things would eventually be destroyed.She warned herself: "Today is a good day for Melanie! I'll think about these things tomorrow!" She walked through the crowd, came to Melanie, kissed her on both cheeks, and sent her sincere wishes:

"You are beautiful, dear, and you will be happy."

The skinny Melanie looked radiant tonight. She whispered into Scarlett's ear with a shy and joyful expression: "We will be aunts soon, dear Scarlett. You are beautiful too."

Scarlett and all her suitors had each danced more than one dance that day—Charles the victor understood with grace.On the one hand, she was happy for her best friend's happiness, and on the other hand, she felt sad.Because she knew it was the last carnival in the South.In the midst of this boisterous dance, her thoughts once again ran wild uncontrollably.

The boys who danced with her, Brent, Stuart, Cade... Most of them died on the battlefield, and the few who came back also lost their enthusiasm, became sick and listless.Before the war began, everyone believed that the South would be victorious in just one month.However, this war was fought for four full years, and this war destroyed everything in the South.That kind of leisurely, peaceful life ceased to exist from the first gunshot.It's never coming back.

Ashley knew the outcome of the war early in the morning, but he still went to the battlefield.Even Rhett, the speculator who was despised by everyone, was like this.Scarlett vaguely recalled Rhett's cold and hard side face in the firelight that day, and his nonchalant laughter when he said goodbye to her in the dark, and seemed to vaguely understand something about this man.

His affection for the Confederacy was as eccentric and restrained as the way he loved her.He laughed at everyone as fools and made rebellious remarks.But he doesn't care as much as he thinks and shows!He laughed openly at everyone, even when he was isolated, as if it would lessen the "quixote" in him that all Southerners have (Jesus! is that the word? Scarlett I don't understand these things).During the war, he still leisurely wore fashionable clothes, went to bars, and hoarded cotton.He told her that "...the Confederacy deserted me and I made a fortune out of her collapse".However, on the night Atlanta fell, he joined the army like the fools he said.That's exactly what he did.Why did he do this?

All kinds of rambling thoughts came flooding in, and Scarlett shook her head to get them all out.

"I can't think about it anymore. If I think about it any longer, I will go crazy. Ah, Atlanta! I'll see him there!" Scarlett clenched her fists with high spirits, which surprised Charles, who was dancing with her. Opening those tender brown eyes wide, "Sure!"