Oh, that dark road where men went by like ghosts, voices stilled, only the muffled tramping of feet on soft dirt, the faint clicking of bridles and the straining creak of leather! And, oh, that dreadful moment when the sick horse balked and cavalry and light cannon rumbled past in the darkness, past where they sat breathless, so close she could almost reach out and touch them, so close she could smell the stale sweat on the soldiers’ bodies!
When, at last, they had neared Rough and Ready, a few camp fires were gleaming where the last of Steve Lee’s rear guard was awaiting orders to fall back. She had circled through a plowed field for a mile until the light of the fires died out behind her. And then she had lost her way in the darkness and sobbed when she could not find the little wagon path she knew so well. Then finally having found it, the horse sank in the traces and refused to move, refused to rise even when she and Prissy tugged at the bridle.
So she had unharnessed him and crawled, sodden with fatigue, into the back of the wagon and stretched her aching legs. She had a faint memory of Melanie’s voice before sleep clamped down her eyelids, a weak voice that apologized even as it begged: “Scarlett, can I have some water, please?”
She had said: “There isn’t any,” and gone to sleep before the words were out of her mouth.
Now it was morning and the world was still and serene and green and gold with dappled sunshine. And no soldiers in sight anywhere. She was hungry and dry with thirst, aching and cramped and filled with wonder that she, Scarlett O’Hara, who could never rest well except between linen sheets and on the softest of feather beds, had slept like a field hand on hard planks.
Blinking in the sunlight, her eyes fell on Melanie and she gasped, horrified. Melanie lay so still and white Scarlett thought she must be dead. She looked dead. She looked like a dead, old woman with her ravaged face and her dark hair snarled and tangled across it. Then Scarlett saw with relief the faint rise and fall of her shallow breathing and knew that Melanie had survived the night.
Scarlett shaded her eyes with her hand and looked about her. They had evidently spent the night under the trees in someone’s front yard, for a sand and gravel driveway stretched out before her, winding away under an avenue of cedars.
“Why, it’s the Mallory place!” she thought, her heart leaping with gladness at the thought of friends and help.
But a stillness as of death hung over the plantation. The shrubs and grass of the lawn were cut to pieces where hooves and wheels and feet had torn frantically back and forth until the soil was churned up. She looked toward the house and instead of the old white clapboard place she knew so well, she saw there only a long rectangle of blackened granite foundation stones and two tall chimneys rearing smoke-stained bricks into the charred leaves of still trees.
She drew a deep shuddering breath. Would she find Tara like this, level with the ground, silent as the dead?
“I mustn’t think about that now,” she told herself hurriedly. “I mustn’t let myself think about it. I’ll get scared again if I think about it.” But, in spite of herself, her heart quickened and each beat seemed to thunder: “Home! Hurry! Home! Hurry!”
They must be starting on toward home again. But first they must find some food and water, especially water. She prodded Prissy awake. Prissy rolled her eyes as she looked about her.
“Fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah din’ spec ter wake up agin ‘cept in de Promise Lan’.”
“You’re a long way from there,” said Scarlett, trying to smooth back her untidy hair. Her face was damp and her body was already wet with sweat. She felt dirty and messy and sticky, almost as if she smelled bad. Her clothes were crushed and wrinkled from sleeping in them and she had never felt more acutely tired and sore in all her life. Muscles she did not know she possessed ached from her unaccustomed exertions of the night before and every movement brought sharp pain.
She looked down at Melanie and saw that her dark eyes were opened. They were sick eyes, fever bright, and dark baggy circles were beneath them. She opened cracking lips and whispered appealingly: “Water.”
“Get up, Prissy,” ordered Scarlett. “We’ll go to the well and get some water.”
“But, Miss Scarlett! Dey mout be hants up dar. Sposin’ somebody daid up dar?”
“I’ll make a hant out of you if you don’t get out of this wagon,” said Scarlett, who was in no mood for argument, as she climbed lamely down to the ground.
And then she thought of the horse. Name of God! Suppose the horse had died in the night! He had seemed ready to die when she unharnessed him. She ran around the wagon and saw him lying on his side. If he were dead, she would curse God and die too. Somebody in the Bible had done just that thing. Cursed God and died. She knew just how that person felt. But the horse was alive—breathing heavily, sick eyes half closed, but alive. Well, some water would help him too.
Prissy climbed reluctantly from the wagon with many groans and timorously followed Scarlett up the avenue. Behind the ruins the row of whitewashed slave quarters stood silent and deserted under the overhanging trees. Between the quarters and the smoked stone foundations, they found the well, and the roof of it still stood with the bucket far down the well. Between them, they wound up the rope, and when the bucket of cool sparkling water appeared out of the dark depths, Scarlett tilted it to her lips and drank with loud sucking noises, spilling the water all over herself.
She drank until Prissy’s petulant: “Well, Ah’s thusty, too, Miss Scarlett,” made her recall the needs of the others.
“Untie the knot and take the bucket to the wagon and give them some. And give the rest to the horse. Don’t you think Miss Melanie ought to nurse the baby? He’ll starve.”
“Law, Miss Scarlett, Miss Melly ain’ got no milk—ain’ gwine have none.”
“How do you know?”
“Ah’s seed too many lak her.”
“Don’t go putting on any airs with me. A precious little you knew about babies yesterday. Hurry now. I’m going to try to find something to eat.”
Scarlett’s search was futile until in the orchard she found a few apples. Soldiers had been there before her and there was none on the trees. Those she found on the ground were mostly rotten. She filled her skirt with the best of them and came back across the soft earth, collecting small pebbles in her slippers. Why hadn’t she thought of putting on stouter shoes last night? Why hadn’t she brought her sun hat? Why hadn’t she brought something to eat? She’d acted like a fool. But, of course, she’d thought Rhett would take care of them.
Rhett! She spat on the ground, for the very name tasted bad. How she hated him! How contemptible he had been! And she had stood there in the road and let him kiss her—and almost liked it. She had been crazy last night. How despicable he was!
When she came back, she divided up the apples and threw the rest into the back of the wagon. The horse was on his feet now but the water did not seem to have refreshed him much. He looked far worse in the daylight than he had the night before. His hip bones stood out like an old cow’s, his ribs showed like a washboard and his back was a mass of sores. She shrank from touching him as she harnessed him. When she slipped the bit into his mouth, she saw that he was practically toothless. As old as the hills! While Rhett was stealing a horse, why couldn’t he have stolen a good one?
She mounted the seat and brought down the hickory limb on his back. He wheezed and started, but he walked so slowly as she turned him into the road she knew she could walk faster herself with no effort whatever. Oh, if only she didn’t have Melanie and Wade and the baby and Prissy to bother with! How swiftly she could walk home! Why, she would run home, run every step of the way that would bring her closer to Tara and to Mother.
They couldn’t be more than fifteen miles from home, but at the rate this old nag traveled it would take all day, for she would have to stop frequently to rest him. All day! She looked down the glaring red road, cut in deep ruts where cannon wheels and ambulances had gone over it. It would be hours before she knew if Tara still stood and if Ellen were there. It would be hours before she finished her journey under the broiling September sun.
She looked back at Melanie who lay with sick eyes closed against the sun and jerked loose the strings of her bonnet and tossed it to Prissy.
“Put that over her face. It’ll keep the sun out of her eyes.” Then as the heat beat down upon her unprotected head, she thought: “I’ll be as freckled as a guinea egg before this day is over.”
She had never in her life been out in the sunshine without a hat or veils, never handled reins without gloves to protect the white skin of her dimpled hands. Yet here she was exposed to the sun in a broken-down wagon with a broken-down horse, dirty, sweaty, hungry, helpless to do anything but plod along at a snail’s pace through a deserted land. What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe and secure! What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall, that Georgia could never be invaded. But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and men into a screaming tornado, sweeping away her world, whirling her out of her sheltered life, and dropping her down in the midst of this still, haunted desolation.
Was Tara still standing? Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?
She laid the whip on the tired horse’s back and tried to urge him on while the waggling wheels rocked them drunkenly from side to side.
?
There was death in the air. In the rays of the late afternoon sun, every well-remembered field and forest grove was green and still, with an unearthly quiet that struck terror to Scarlett’s heart. Every empty, shell-pitted house they had passed that day, every gaunt chimney standing sentinel over smoke-blackened ruins, had frightened her more. They had not seen a living human being or animal since the night before. Dead men and dead horses, yes, and dead mules, lying by the road, swollen, covered with flies, but nothing alive. No far-off cattle lowed, no birds sang, no wind waved the trees. Only the tired plop-plop of the horse’s feet and the weak wailing of Melanie’s baby broke the stillness.
The countryside lay as under some dread enchantment Or worse still, thought Scarlett with a chill, like the familiar and dear face of a mother, beautiful and quiet at last, after death agonies. She felt that the once-familiar woods were full of ghosts. Thousands had died in the fighting near Jonesboro. They were here in these haunted woods where the slanting afternoon sun gleamed eerily through unmoving leaves, friends and foes, peering at her in her rickety wagon, through eyes blinded with blood and red dust—glazed, horrible eyes.
“Mother! Mother!” she whispered. If she could only win to Ellen! If only, by a miracle of God, Tara were still standing and she could drive up the long avenue of trees and go into the house and see her mother’s kind, tender face, could feel once more the soft capable hands that drove out fear, could clutch Ellen’s skirts and bury her face in them. Mother would know what to do. She wouldn’t let Melanie and her baby die. She would drive away all ghosts and fears with her quiet “Hush, hush.” But Mother was ill, perhaps dying.
Scarlett laid the whip across the weary rump of the horse. They must go faster! They had crept along this never-ending road all the long hot day. Soon it would be night and they would be alone in this desolation that was death. She gripped the reins tighter with hands that were blistered and slapped them fiercely on the horse’s back, her aching arms burning at the movement.
If she could only reach the kind arms of Tara and Ellen and lay down her burdens, far too heavy for her young shoulders—the dying woman, the fading baby, her own hungry little boy, the frightened negro, all looking to her for strength, for guidance, all reading in her straight back courage she did not possess and strength which had long since failed.
The exhausted horse did not respond to the whip or reins but shambled on, dragging his feet, stumbling on small rocks and swaying as if ready to fall to his knees. But, as twilight came, they at last entered the final lap of the long journey. They rounded the bend of the wagon path and turned into the main road. Tara was only a mile away!
Here loomed up the dark bulk of the mock-orange hedge that marked the beginning of the Macintosh property. A little farther on, Scarlett drew rein in front of the avenue of oaks that led from the road to old Angus Macintosh’s house. She peered through the gathering dusk down the two lines of ancient trees. All was dark. Not a single light showed in the house or in the quarters. Straining her eyes in the darkness she dimly discerned a sight which had grown familiar through that terrible day—two tall chimneys, like gigantic tombstones towering above the ruined second floor, and broken unlit windows blotching the walls like still, blind eyes.
“Hello!” she shouted, summoning all her strength. “Hello!”
Prissy clawed at her in a frenzy of fright and Scarlett, turning, saw that her eyes were rolling in her head.
“Doan holler, Miss Scarlett! Please, doan holler agin!” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Dey ain’ no tellin’ whut mout answer!”
“Dear God!” thought Scarlett, a shiver running through her. “Dear God! She’s right Anything might come out of there!”
She flapped the reins and urged the horse forward. The sight of the Macintosh house had pricked the last bubble of hope remaining to her. It was burned, in rums, deserted, as were all the plantations she had passed that day. Tara lay only half a mite away, on the same road, right in the path of the army. Tara was leveled, too! She would find only the blackened bricks, starlight shining through the roofless walls, Ellen and Gerald gone, the girls gone, Mammy gone, the negroes gone, God knows where, and this hideous stillness over everything.
Why had she come on this fool’s errand, against all common sense, dragging Melanie and her child? Better that they had died in Atlanta than, tortured by this day of burning sun and jolting wagon, to die in the silent ruins of Tara.
But Ashley had left Melanie in her care. Take care of her.” Oh, that beautiful, heartbreaking day when he had kissed her good-by before he went away forever! “You’ll take care of her, won’t you? Promise!” And she had promised. Why had she ever bound herself with such a promise, doubly binding now that Ashley was gone? Even in her exhaustion she hated Melanie, hated the tiny mewing voice of her child which, fainter and fainter, pierced the stillness. But she had promised and now they belonged to her, even as Wade and Prissy belonged to her, and she must struggle and fight for them as long as she had strength or breath. She could have left them in Atlanta, dumped Melanie into the hospital and deserted her. But had she done that, she could never face Ashley, either on this earth or in the hereafter and tell him she had left his wife and child to die among strangers.
