This was her last view of home, her last view except what she might see from the cover of the woods or the swamp, the tall chimneys wrapped in smoke, the roof crashing in flame.
“I can’t leave you,” she thought and her teeth chattered with fear. “I can’t leave you. Pa wouldn’t leave you. He told them they’d have to burn you over his head. Then, they’ll burn you over my head for I can’t leave you either. You’re all I’ve got left.”
With the decision, some of her fear fell away and there remained only a congealed feeling in her breast, as if all hope and fear had frozen. As she stood there, she heard from the avenue the sound of many horses’ feet, the jingle of bridle bits and sabers rattling in scabbards and a harsh voice crying a command: “Dismount!” Swiftly she bent to the child beside her and her voice was urgent but oddly gentle.
“Turn me loose, Wade, honey! You run down the stairs quick and through the back yard toward the swamp. Mammy will be there and Aunt Melly. Run quickly, darling, and don’t be afraid.”
At the change in her tone, the boy looked up and Scarlett was appalled at the look in his eyes, like a baby rabbit in a trap.
“Oh, Mother of God!” she prayed. “Don’t let him have a convulsion! Not-not before the Yankees. They mustn’t know we are afraid.” And, as the child only gripped her skirt the tighter, she said clearly: “Be a little man, Wade. They’re only a passel of damn Yankees!”
And she went down the steps to meet them.
Sherman was marching through Georgia, from Atlanta to the sea. Behind him lay the smoking ruins of Atlanta to which the torch had been set as the blue army tramped out. Before him lay three hundred miles of territory virtually undefended save by a few state militia and the old men and young boys of the Home Guard.
Here lay the fertile state, dotted with plantations, sheltering the women and children, the very old and the negroes. In a swath eighty miles wide the Yankees were looting and burning. There were hundreds of homes in flames, hundreds of homes resounding with their footsteps. But, to Scarlett, watching the bluecoats pour into the front hall, it was not a countrywide affair. It was entirely personal, a malicious action aimed directly at her and hers.
She stood at the foot of the stairs, the baby in her arms, Wade pressed tightly against her, his head hidden in her skirts as the Yankees swarmed through the house, pushing roughly past her up the stairs, dragging furniture onto the front porch, running bayonets and knives into upholstery and digging inside for concealed valuables. Upstairs they were ripping open mattresses and feather beds until the air in the hall was thick with feathers that floated softly down on her head. Impotent rage quelled what little fear was left in her heart as she stood helpless while they plundered and stole and ruined.
The sergeant in charge was a bow-legged, grizzled little man with a large wad of tobacco in his cheek. He reached Scarlett before any of his men and, spitting freely on the floor and her skirts, said briefly:
“Lemme have what you got in yore hand, lady.”
She had forgotten the trinkets she had intended to hide and, with a sneer which she hoped was as eloquent as that pictured on Grandma Robillard’s face, she flung the articles to the floor and almost enjoyed the rapacious scramble that ensued.
“I’ll trouble you for thet ring and them earbobs.”
Scarlett tucked the baby more securely under her arm so that he hung face downward, crimson and screaming, and removed the garnet earrings which had been Gerald’s wedding present to Ellen. Then she stripped off the large sapphire solitaire which Charles had given her as an engagement ring.
“Don’t throw um. Hand um to me,” said the sergeant, putting out his hands. “Them bastards got enough already. What else have you got?” His eyes went over her basque sharply.
For a moment Scarlett went faint, already feeling rough hands thrusting themselves into her bosom, fumbling at her garters.
“That is all, but I suppose it is customary to strip your victims?”
“Oh, I’ll take your word,” said the sergeant good-naturedly, spitting again as he turned away. Scarlett righted the baby and tried to soothe him, holding her hand over the place on the diaper where the wallet was hidden, thanking God that Melanie had a baby and that baby had a diaper.
Upstairs she could hear heavy boots trampling, the protesting screech of furniture pulled across the floor, the crashing of china and mirrors, the curses when nothing of value appeared. From the yard came loud cries: “Head um off! Don’t let um get away!” and the despairing squawks of the hens and quacking and honking of the ducks and geese. A pang went through her as she heard an agonized squealing which was suddenly stilled by a pistol shot and she knew that the sow was dead. Damn Prissy! She had run off and left her. If only the shoats were safe! If only the family had gotten safely to the swamp! But there was no way of knowing.
She stood quietly in the hall while the soldiers boiled about her, shouting and cursing. Wade’s fingers were in her skirt in a terrified grip. She could feel his body shaking as he pressed against her but she could not bring herself to speak reassuringly to him. She could not bring herself to utter any word to the Yankees, either of pleading, protest or anger. She could only thank God that her knees still had the strength to support her, that her neck was still strong enough to hold her head high. But when a squad of bearded men came lumbering down the steps, laden with an assortment of stolen articles and she saw Charles’ sword in the hands of one, she did cry out.
That sword was Wade’s. It had been his father’s and his grandfather’s sword and Scarlett had given it to the little boy on his last birthday. They had made quite a ceremony of it and Melanie had cried, cried with tears of pride and sorrowful memory, and kissed him and said he must grow up to be a brave soldier like his father and his grandfather. Wade was very proud of it and often climbed upon the table beneath where it hung to pat it. Scarlett could endure seeing her own possessions going out of the house in hateful alien hands but not this-not her little boy’s pride. Wade, peering from the protection of her skirts at the sound of her cry, found speech and courage in a mighty sob. Stretching out one hand he cried:
“Mine!”
“You can’t take that!” said Scarlett swiftly, holding out her hand too.
“I can’t, hey?” said the little soldier who held it, grinning impudently at her. “Well, I can! It’s a Rebel sword!”
“It’s-it’s not. It’s a Mexican War sword. You can’t take it. It’s my little boy’s. It was his grandfather’s! Oh, Captain,” she cried, turning to the sergeant, “please make him give it to me!”
The sergeant, pleased at his promotion, stepped forward.
“Lemme see thet sword, Bub,” he said.
Reluctantly, the little trooper handed it to him. “It’s got a solid-gold hilt,” he said.
The sergeant turned it in his hand, held the hilt up to the sunlight to read the engraved inscription.
“’To Colonel William R. Hamilton,’” he deciphered. “’From His Staff. For Gallantry. Buena Vista. 1847.”
“Ho, lady,” he said, “I was at Buena Vista myself.”
“Indeed,” said Scarlett icily.
“Was I? Thet was hot fightin’, lemme tell you. I ain’t seen such hot fightin’ in this war as we seen in thet one. So this sword was this little tyke’s grandaddy’s?”
“Yes.”
“Well, he can have it,” said the sergeant, who was satisfied enough with the jewelry and trinkets tied up in his handkerchief.
“But it’s got a solid-gold hilt,” insisted the little trooper.
“We’ll leave her thet to remember us by,” grinned the sergeant.
Scarlett took the sword, not even saying “Thank you.” Why should she thank these thieves for returning her own property to her? She held the sword against her while the little cavalryman argued and wrangled with the sergeant.
“By God, I’ll give these damn Rebels something to remember me by,” shouted the private finally when the sergeant, losing his good nature, told him to go to hell and not talk back. The little man went charging toward the back of the house and Scarlett breathed more easily. They had said nothing about burning the house. They hadn’t told her to leave so they could fire it. Perhaps-perhaps-The men came rambling into the hall from the upstairs and the out of doors.
“Anything?” questioned the sergeant.
“One hog and a few chickens and ducks.”
“Some corn and a few yams and beans. That wildcat we saw on the horse must have given the alarm, all right.”
“Regular Paul Revere, eh?”
“Well, there ain’t much here, Sarge. You got the pickin’s. Let’s move on before the whole country gets the news we’re comin’.”
“Didja dig under the smokehouse? They generally buries things there.”
“Ain’t no smokehouse.”
“Didja dig in the nigger cabins?”
“Nothin’ but cotton in the cabins. We set fire to it.”
For a brief instant Scarlett saw the long hot days in the cotton field, felt again the terrible ache in her back, the raw bruised flesh of her shoulders. All for nothing. The cotton was gone.
“You ain’t got much, for a fac’, have you, lady?”
“Your army has been here before,” she said coolly.
“That’s a fac’. We were in this neighborhood in September,” said one of the men, turning something in his hand. “I’d forgot.”
Scarlett saw it was Ellen’s gold thimble that he held. How often she had seen it gleaming in and out of Ellen’s fancy work. The sight of it brought back too many hurting memories of the slender hand which had worn it. There it lay in this stranger’s calloused dirty palm and soon it would find its way North and onto the finger of some Yankee woman who would be proud to wear stolen things. Ellen’s thimble!
Scarlett dropped her head so the enemy could not see her cry and the tears fell slowly down on the baby’s head. Through the blur, she saw the men moving toward the doorway, heard the sergeant calling commands in a loud rough voice. They were going and Tara was safe, but with the pain of Ellen’s memory on her, she was hardly glad. The sound of the banging sabers and horses’ hooves brought little relief and she stood, suddenly weak and nerveless, as they moved off down the avenue, every man laden with stolen goods, clothing, blankets, pictures, hens and ducks, the sow.
Then to her nostrils was borne the smell of smoke and she turned, too weak with lessening strain, to care about the cotton. Through the open windows of the dining room, she saw smoke drifting lazily out of the negro cabins. There went the cotton. There went the tax money and part of the money which was to see them through this bitter winter. There was nothing she could do about it either, except watch. She had seen fires in cotton before and she knew how difficult they were to put out, even with many men laboring at it. Thank God, the quarters were so far from the house! Thank God, there was no wind today to carry sparks to the roof of Tara!
Suddenly she swung about, rigid as a pointer, and stared with horror-struck eyes down the hall, down the covered passageway toward the kitchen. There was smoke coming from the kitchen!
Somewhere between the hall and the kitchen, she laid the baby down. Somewhere she flung off Wade’s grip, slinging him against the wall. She burst into the smoke-filled kitchen and reeled back, coughing, her eyes streaming tears from the smoke. Again she plunged in, her skirt held over her nose.
The room was dark, lit as it was by one small window, and so thick with smoke that she was blinded, but she could hear the hiss and crackle of flames. Dashing a hand across her eyes, she peered squinting and saw thin lines of flame creeping across the kitchen floor, toward the walls. Someone had scattered the blazing logs in the open fireplace across the whole room and the tinder-dry pine floor was sucking in the flames and spewing them up like water.
Back she rushed to the dining room and snatched a rag rug from the floor, spilling two chairs with a crash.
“I’ll never beat it out-never, never! Oh, God, if only there was someone to help! Tara is gone-gone! Oh, God! This was what that little wretch meant when he said he’d give me something to remember him by! Oh, if I’d only let him have the sword!”
In the hallway she passed her son lying in the corner with his sword. His eyes were closed and his face had a look of slack, unearthly peace.
“My God! He’s dead! They’ve frightened him to death!” she thought in agony but she raced by him to the bucket of drinking water which always stood in the passageway by the kitchen door.
She soused the end of the rug into the bucket and drawing a deep breath plunged again into the smoke-filled room slamming the door behind her. For an eternity she reeled and coughed, beating the rug against the lines of fire that shot swiftly beyond her. Twice her long skirt took fire and she slapped it out with her hands. She could smell the sickening smell of her hair scorching, as it came loose from its pins and swept about her shoulders. The flames raced ever beyond her, toward the walls of the covered runway, fiery snakes that writhed and leaped and, exhaustion sweeping her, she knew that it was hopeless.
Then the door swung open and the sucking draft flung the flames higher. It closed with a bang and, in the swirling smoke, Scarlett, half blind, saw Melanie, stamping her feet on the flames, beating at them with something dark and heavy. She saw her staggering, heard her coughing, caught a lightning-flash glimpse of her set white face and eyes narrow to slits against the smoke, saw her small body curving back and forth as she swung her rug up and down. For another eternity they fought and swayed, side by side, and Scarlett could see that the lines of fire were shortening. Then suddenly Melanie turned toward her and, with a cry, hit her across the shoulders with all her might. Scarlett went down in a whirlwind of smoke and darkness.
When she opened her eyes she was lying on the back porch, her head pillowed comfortably on Melanie’s lap, and the afternoon sunlight was shining on her face. Her hands, face and shoulders smarted intolerably from burns. Smoke was still rolling from the quarters, enveloping the cabins in thick clouds, and the smell of burning cotton was strong. Scarlett saw wisps of smoke drifting from the kitchen and she stirred frantically to rise.
But she was pushed back as Melanie’s calm voice said: “Lie still, dear. The fire’s out.”
She lay quiet for a moment, eyes closed, sighing with relief, and heard the slobbery gurgle of the baby near by and the reassuring sound of Wade’s hiccoughing. So he wasn’t dead, thank God! She opened her eyes and looked up into Melanie’s face. Her curls were singed, her face black with smut but her eyes were sparkling with excitement and she was smiling.
“You look like a nigger,” murmured Scarlett, burrowing her head wearily into its soft pillow.
“And you look like the end man in a minstrel show,” replied Melanie equably.
“Why did you have to hit me?”
“Because, my darling, your back was on fire. I didn’t dream you’d faint, though the Lord knows you’ve had enough today to kill you… I came back as soon as I got the stock safe in the woods. I nearly died, thinking about you and the baby alone. Did-the Yankees harm you?”
“If you mean did they rape me, no,” said Scarlett, groaning as she tried to sit up. Though Melanie’s lap was soft, the porch on which she was lying was far from comfortable. “But they’ve stolen everything, everything. We’ve lost everything-Well, what is there to look so happy about?”
“We haven’t lost each other and our babies are all right and we have a roof over our heads,” said Melanie and there was a lilt in her voice. “And that’s all anyone can hope for now… Goodness but Beau is wet! I suppose the Yankees even stole his extra diapers. He-Scarlett, what on earth is in his diaper?”
She thrust a suddenly frightened hand down the baby’s back and brought up the wallet. For a moment she looked at it as if she had never seen it before and then she began to laugh, peal on peal of mirth that had in it no hint of hysteria.
“Nobody but you would ever have thought of it,” she cried and flinging her arms around Scarlett’s neck she kissed her. “You are the beatenest sister I ever had!”
Scarlett permitted the embrace because she was too tired to struggle, because the words of praise brought balm to her spirit and because, in the dark smoke-filled kitchen, there had been born a greater respect for her sister-in-law, a closer feeling of comradeship.
“I’ll say this for her,” she thought grudgingly, “she’s always there when you need her.”
Chapter XXVIII
Cold weather set in abruptly with a killing frost. Chilling winds swept beneath the doorsills and rattled the loose windowpanes with a monotonous tinkling sound. The last of the leaves fell from the bare trees and only the pines stood clothed, black and cold against pale skies. The rutted red roads were frozen to flintiness and hunger rode the winds through Georgia.
Scarlett recalled bitterly her conversation with Grandma Fontaine. On that afternoon two months ago, which now seemed years in the past, she had told the old lady she had already known the worst which could possibly happen to her, and she had spoken from the bottom of her heart. Now that remark sounded like schoolgirl hyperbole. Before Sherman’s men came through Tara the second time, she had her small riches of food and money, she had neighbors more fortunate than she and she had the cotton which would tide her over until spring. Now the cotton was gone, the food was gone, the money was of no use to her, for there was no food to buy with it, and the neighbors were in worse plight than she. At least, she had the cow and the calf, a few shoats and the horse, and the neighbors had nothing but the little they had been able to hide in the woods and bury in the ground.
Fairhill, the Tarleton home, was burned to the foundations, and Mrs. Tarleton and the four girls were existing in the overseer’s house. The Munroe house near Lovejoy was leveled too. The wooden wing of Mimosa had burned and only the thick resistant stucco of the main house and the frenzied work of the Fontaine women and their slaves with wet blankets and quilts had saved it. The Calverts’ house had again been spared, due to the intercession of Hilton, the Yankee overseer, but there was not a head of livestock, not a fowl, not an ear of corn left on the place.
At Tara and throughout the County, the problem was food. Most of the families had nothing at all but the remains of their yam crops and their peanuts and such game as they could catch in the woods. What they had, each shared with less fortunate friends, as they had done in more prosperous days. But the time soon came when there was nothing to share.
At Tara, they ate rabbit and possum and catfish, if Pork was lucky. On other days a small amount of milk, hickory nuts, roasted acorns and yams. They were always hungry. To Scarlett it seemed that at every turn she met outstretched hands, pleading eyes. The sight of them drove her almost to madness, for she was as hungry as they.
She ordered the calf killed, because he drank so much of the precious milk, and that night everyone ate so much fresh veal all of them were ill. She knew that she should kill one of the shoats but she put it off from day to day, hoping to raise them to maturity. They were so small. There would be so little of them to eat if they were killed now and so much more if they could be saved a little longer. Nightly she debated with Melanie the advisability of sending Pork abroad on the horse with some greenbacks to try to buy food. But the fear that the horse might be captured and the money taken from Pork deterred them. They did not know where the Yankees were. They might be a thousand miles away or only across the river. Once, Scarlett, in desperation, started to ride out herself to search for food, but the hysterical outbursts of the whole family fearful of the Yankees made her abandon the plan.
Pork foraged far, at times not coming home all night, and Scarlett did not ask him where he went. Sometimes he returned with game, sometimes with a few ears of corn, a bag of dried peas. Once he brought home a rooster which he said he found in the woods. The family ate it with relish but a sense of guilt, knowing very well Pork had stolen it, as he had stolen the peas and corn. One night soon after this, he tapped on Scarlett’s door long after the house was asleep and sheepishly exhibited a leg peppered with small shot. As she bandaged it for him, he explained awkwardly that when attempting to get into a hen coop at Fayetteville, he had been discovered. Scarlett did not ask whose hen coop but patted Pork’s shoulder gently, tears in her eyes. Negroes were provoking sometimes and stupid and lazy, but there was loyalty in them that money couldn’t buy, a feeling of oneness with their white folks which made them risk their lives to keep food on the table.
In other days Pork’s pilferings would have been a serious matter, probably calling for a whipping. In other days she would have been forced at least to reprimand him severely. “Always remember, dear,” Ellen had said, “you are responsible for the moral as well as the physical welfare of the darkies God has intrusted to your care. You must realize that they are like children and must be guarded from themselves like children, and you must always set them a good example.”
But now, Scarlett pushed that admonition into the back of her mind. That she was encouraging theft, and perhaps theft from people worse off than she, was no longer a matter for conscience. In fact the morals of the affair weighed lightly upon her. Instead of punishment or reproof, she only regretted he had been shot.
“You must be more careful, Pork. We don’t want to lose you. What would we do without you? You’ve been mighty good and faithful and when we get some money again, I’m going to buy you a big gold watch and engrave on it something out of the Bible. ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Pork beamed under the praise and gingerly rubbed his bandaged leg.
“Dat soun’ mighty fine, Miss Scarlett. W’en you speckin’ ter git dat money?”
“I don’t know, Pork, but I’m going to get it some time, somehow.” She bent on him an unseeing glance that was so passionately bitter he stirred uneasily, “Some day, when this war is over, I’m going to have lots of money, and when I do I’ll never be hungry or cold again. None of us will ever be hungry or cold. We’ll all wear fine clothes and have fried chicken every day and-”
Then she stopped. The strictest rule at Tara, one which she herself had made and which she rigidly enforced, was that no one should ever talk of the fine meals they had eaten in the past or what they would eat now, if they had the opportunity.
Pork slipped from the room as she remained staring moodily into the distance. In the old days, now dead and gone, life had been so complex, so full of intricate and complicated problems. There had been the problem of trying to win Ashley’s love and trying to keep a dozen other beaux dangling and unhappy. There had been small breaches of conduct to be concealed from her elders, jealous girls to be flouted or placated, styles of dresses and materials to be chosen, different coiffures to be tried and, oh, so many, many other matters to be decided! Now life was so amazingly simple. Now all that mattered was food enough to keep off starvation, clothing enough to prevent freezing and a roof overhead which did not leak too much.
It was during these days that Scarlett dreamed and dreamed again the nightmare which was to haunt her for years. It was always the same dream, the details never varied, but the terror of it mounted each time it came to her and the fear of experiencing it again troubled even her waking hours. She remembered so well the incidents of the day when she had first dreamed it.
Cold rain had fallen for days and the house was chill with drafts and dampness. The logs in the fireplace were wet and smoky and gave little heat. There had been nothing to eat except milk since breakfast, for the yams were exhausted and Pork’s snares and fishlines had yielded nothing. One of the shoats would have to be killed the next day if they were to eat at all. Strained and hungry faces, black and white, were staring at her, mutely asking her to provide food. She would have to risk losing the horse and send Pork out to buy something. And to make matters worse, Wade was ill with a sore throat and a raging fever and there was neither doctor nor medicine for him.
Hungry, weary with watching her child, Scarlett left him to Melanie’s care for a while and lay down on her bed to nap. Her feet icy, she twisted and turned, unable to sleep, weighed down with fear and despair. Again and again, she thought: “What shall I do? Where shall I turn? Isn’t there anybody in the world who can help me?” Where had all the security of the world gone? Why wasn’t there someone, some strong wise person to take the burdens from her? She wasn’t made to carry them. She did not know how to carry them. And then she fell into an uneasy doze.
She was in a wild strange country so thick with swirling mist she could not see her hand before her face. The earth beneath her feet was uneasy. It was a haunted land, still with a terrible stillness, and she was lost in it, lost and terrified as a child in the night. She was bitterly cold and hungry and so fearful of what lurked in the mists about her that she tried to scream and could not. There were things in the fog reaching out fingers to pluck at her skirt, to drag her down into the uneasy quaking earth on which she stood, silent, relentless, spectral hands. Then, she knew that somewhere in the opaque gloom about her there was shelter, help, a haven of refuge and warmth. But where was it? Could she reach it before the hands clutched her and dragged her down into the quicksands?
Suddenly she was running, running through the mist like a mad thing, crying and screaming, throwing out her arms to clutch only empty air and wet mist. Where was the haven? It eluded her but it was there, hidden, somewhere. If she could only reach it! If she could only reach it she would be safe! But terror was weakening her legs, hunger making her faint. She gave one despairing cry and awoke to find Melanie’s worried face above her and Melanie’s hand shaking her to wakefulness.
The dream returned again and again, whenever she went to sleep with an empty stomach. And that was frequently enough. It so frightened her that she feared to sleep, although she feverishly told herself there was nothing in such a dream to be afraid of. There was nothing in a dream about fog to scare her so. Nothing at all-yet the thought of dropping off into that mist-filled country so terrified her she began sleeping with Melanie, who would wake her up when her moaning and twitching revealed that she was again in the clutch of the dream.
Under the strain she grew white and thin. The pretty roundness left her face, throwing her cheek bones into prominence, emphasizing her slanting green eyes and giving her the look of a prowling, hungry cat.
“Daytime is enough like a nightmare without my dreaming things,” she thought desperately and began hoarding her daily ration to eat it just before she went to sleep.
At Christmas time Frank Kennedy and a small troop from the commissary department jogged up to Tara on a futile hunt for grain and animals for the army. They were a ragged and ruffianly appearing crew, mounted on lame and heaving horses which obviously were in too bad condition to be used for more active service. Like their animals the men had been invalided out of the front-line forces and, except for Frank, all of them had an arm missing or an eye gone or stiffened joints. Most of them wore blue overcoats of captured Yankees and, for a brief instant of horror, those at Tara thought Sherman’s men had returned.
They stayed the night on the plantation, sleeping on the floor in the parlor, luxuriating as they stretched themselves on the velvet rug, for it had been weeks since they had slept under a roof or on anything softer than pine needles and hard earth. For all their dirty beards and tatters they were a well-bred crowd, full of pleasant small talk, jokes and compliments and very glad to be spending Christmas Eve in a big house, surrounded by pretty women as they had been accustomed to do in days long past. They refused to be serious about the war, told outrageous lies to make the girls laugh and brought to the bare and looted house the first lightness, the first hint of festivity it had known in many a day.
“It’s almost like the old days when we had house parties, isn’t it?” whispered Suellen happily to Scarlett. Suellen was raised to the skies by having a beau of her own in the house again and she could hardly take her eyes off Frank Kennedy. Scarlett was surprised to see that Suellen could be almost pretty, despite the thinness which had persisted since her illness. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a soft luminous look in her eyes.
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