He spoke the last words with a simple dignity that touched Scarlett, even in her amusement. It was beyond her comprehension that anyone could love Suellen. Her sister seemed to her a monster of selfishness, of complaints and of what she could only describe as pure cussedness.

“Why, Mr. Kennedy,” she said kindly, “it’s quite all right. I’m sure I can speak for Pa. He always set a store by you and he always expected Suellen to marry you.”

“Did he now?” cried Frank, happiness in his face.

“Indeed yes,” answered Scarlett, concealing a grin as she remembered how frequently Gerald had rudely bellowed across the supper table to Suellen: “How now, Missy! Hasn’t your ardent beau popped the question yet? Shall I be asking him his intentions?”

“I shall ask her tonight,” he said, his face quivering, and he clutched her hand and shook it. “You’re so kind, Miss Scarlett.”

“I’ll send her to you,” smiled Scarlett, starting for the parlor. Melanie was beginning to play. The piano was sadly out of tune but some of the chords were musical and Melanie was raising her voice to lead the others in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!”

Scarlett paused. It did not seem possible that war had swept over them twice, that they were living in a ravaged country, close to the border of starvation, when this old sweet Christmas hymn was being sung. Abruptly she turned to Frank.

“What did you mean when you said it looked like the end of the world to you?”

“I’ll talk frankly,” he said slowly, “but I wouldn’t want you to be alarming the other ladies with what I say. The war can’t go on much longer. There aren’t any fresh men to fill the ranks and the desertions are running high — higher than the army likes to admit. You see, the men can’t stand to be away from their families when they know they’re starving, so they go home to try to provide for them. I can’t blame them but it weakens the army. And the army can’t fight without food and there isn’t any food. I know because, you see, getting food is my business. I’ve been all up and down this section since we retook Atlanta and there isn’t enough to feed a jaybird. It’s the same way for three hundred miles south to Savannah. The folks are starving and the railroads are torn up and there aren’t any new rifles and the ammunition is giving out and there’s no leather at all for shoes. . . . So, you see, the end is almost here.”

The following April General Johnston, who had been given back the shattered remnants of his old command, surrendered them in North Carolina and the war was over. But not until two weeks later did the news reach Tara.

It was the Fontaine boys, the first of the County men home from the war, who brought the news of the surrender.

On the way south from Atlanta, they had passed chimney after chimney where the homes of friends had stood and it seemed almost too much to hope that their own house had been spared. They sighed with relief at the welcome news and laughed, slapping their thighs when Scarlett told them of Sally’s wild ride and how neatly she had cleared their hedge.

“She’s a spunky girl,” said Tony, “and it’s rotten luck for her, Joe getting killed. You all got any chewing tobacco, Scarlett?”

“Nothing but rabbit tobacco. Pa smokes it in a corn cob.”

“I haven’t fallen that low yet,” said Tony, “but I’ll probably come to it.”

“Is Dimity Munroe all right?” asked Alex, eagerly but a little embarrassed, and Scarlett recalled vaguely that he had been sweet on Sally’s younger sister.

“Oh, yes. She’s living with her aunt over in Fayetteville now. You know their house in Lovejoy was burned. And the rest of her folks are in Macon.”

“What he means is — has Dimity married some brave colonel in the Home Guard?” jeered Tony, and Alex turned furious eyes upon him.

“Of course, she isn’t married,” said Scarlett, amused.

“Maybe it would be better if she had,” said Alex gloomily. “How the hell — I beg your pardon, Scarlett. But how can a man ask a girl to marry him when his darkies are all freed and his stock gone and he hasn’t got a cent in his pockets?”

“You know that wouldn’t bother Dimity,” said Scarlett. She could afford to be loyal to Dimity and say nice things about her, for Alex Fontaine had never been one of her own beaux.

“Hell’s afire — Well, I beg your pardon again. I’ll have to quit swearing or Grandma will sure tan my hide. I’m not asking any girl to marry a pauper. It mightn’t bother her but it would bother me.”

While Scarlett talked to the boys on the front porch, Melanie, Suellen and Carreen slipped silently into the house as soon as they heard the news of the surrender.

After the boys had gone, cutting across the back fields of Tara toward home, Scarlett went inside and heard the girls sobbing together on the sofa in Ellen’s little office

After these visits, Scarlett had no desire to see the Tarletons. Now that the four boys were gone, the house burned . But Suellen and Carreen begged and Melanie said it would be unneighborly not to call and welcome Mr. Tarleton back from the war, so one Sunday they went.

This was the worst of all.

As they drove up by the ruins of the house, they saw Beatrice Tarleton dressed in a worn riding habit, a crop under her arm, sitting on the top rail of the fence about the paddock, staring moodily at nothing. Beside her perched the bow-legged little negro who had trained her horses and he looked as glum as his mistress.

“I swear I don’t know what to do with myself now that my darlings are gone,” said Mrs. Tarleton, climbing down from the fence. A stranger might have thought she spoke of her four dead sons, but the girls from Tara knew her horses were in her mind. “All my beautiful horses dead. And oh, my poor Nellie! If I just had Nellie! And nothing but a damned mule on the place. A damned mule,” she repeated, looking indignantly at the scrawny beast. “It’s an insult to the memory of my blooded darlings to have a mule in their paddock. Mules are misbegotten, unnatural critters and it ought to be illegal to breed them.”

Jim Tarleton, completely disguised by a bushy beard, came out of the overseer’s house to welcome and kiss the girls and his four red-haired daughters in mended dresses streamed out behind him, tripping over the dozen black and tan hounds which ran barking to the door at the sound of strange voices.

The Tarletons insisted that the girls stay for dinner, saying they had so few guests these days and wanted to hear all the news. Scarlett did not want to linger, for the atmosphere oppressed her, but Melanie and her two sisters were anxious for a longer visit, so the four stayed for dinner and ate sparingly of the side meat and dried peas which were served them.

There was laughter about the skimpy fare and the Tarleton girls giggled as they told of makeshifts for clothes, as if they were telling the most amusing of jokes. Melanie met them halfway, surprising Scarlett with her unexpected vivacity as she told of trials at Tara, making light of hardships. Scarlett could hardly speak at all. The room seemed so empty without the four great Tarleton boys, lounging and smoking and teasing. And if it seemed empty to her, what must it seem to the Tarletons who were offering a smiling front to their neighbors?

As the girls drove back to Tara, Scarlett was silent for a while, thinking of what she had seen in the various homes.

“Without the darkies, it will be all we can do to keep body and soul together. Nobody can run a big plantation without the darkies, and lots of the fields won’t be cultivated at all and the woods will take over the fields again.

. I know we could make out somehow if the men weren’t all dead. Losing the darkies isn’t the worst part about this. It’s the loss of the men, the young men.” She thought again of the four Tarletons and Joe Fontaine, of Raiford Calvert and the Munroe brothers and all the boys from Fayetteville and Jonesboro whose names she had read on the casualty lists. “If there were just enough men left, we could manage somehow but —”

Another thought struck her — suppose she wanted to marry again. Of course, she didn’t want to marry again. Once was certainly enough. Besides, the only man she’d ever wanted was Ashley and he was married if he was still living. But suppose she would want to marry. Who would there be to marry her? The thought was appalling.

“Melly,” she said, “what’s going to happen to Southern girls?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say. What’s going to happen to them? There’s no one to marry them. Why, Melly, with all the boys dead, there’ll be thousands of girls all over the South who’ll die old maids.”

“And never have any children,” added Melanie, to whom this was the most important thing.

One day not long after this, Cathleen Calvert rode up to Tara at sunset.

“I won’t get down, thank you,” she said. “I just came to tell you that I’m going to be married.”

“What!”

“Who to?”

“Cathy, how grand!”

“When?”

“Tomorrow,” said Cathleen quietly and there was something in her voice which took the eager smiles from their faces. “I came to tell you that I’m going to be married tomorrow, in Jonesboro — and I’m not inviting you all to come.”

They digested this in silence, looking up at her, puzzled. Then Melanie spoke.

“Is it someone we know, dear?”

“Yes,” said Cathleen, shortly. “It’s Mr. Hilton.”

“Mr. Hilton?”

“Yes, Mr. Hilton, our overseer.”

Scarlett could not even find voice to say “Oh!” but Cathleen, peering down suddenly at Melanie, said in a low savage voice: “If you cry, Melly, I can’t stand it. I shall die!”

Melanie said nothing but patted the foot in its awkward home-made shoe which hung from the stirrup. Her head was low.

“And don’t pat me! I can’t stand that either.”

Melanie dropped her hand but still did not look up.

“Well, I must go. I only came to tell you.” The white brittle mask was back again and she picked up the reins.

“How is Cade?” asked Scarlett, utterly at a loss but fumbling for some words to break the awkward silence.

“He is dying,” said Cathleen shortly. There seemed to be no feeling in her voice. “And he is going to die in some comfort and peace if I can manage it, without worry about who will take care of me when he’s gone. You see, my stepmother and the children are going North for good, tomorrow. Well, I must be going.”

Cathleen bent down and Melanie tiptoed. They kissed. Then Cathleen flapped the bridle reins sharply and the old mule moved off.

Melanie looked after her, the tears streaming down her face. Scarlett stared, still dazed.

“Melly, is she crazy? You know she can’t be in love with him.”

“In love? Oh, Scarlett, don’t even suggest such a horrid thing! Oh, poor Cathleen! Poor Cade!”

“Fiddle-dee-dee!” cried Scarlett, beginning to be irritated. It was annoying that Melanie always seemed to grasp more of situations than she herself did. Cathleen’s plight seemed to her more startling than catastrophic. Of course it was no pleasant thought, marrying Yankee white trash, but after all a girl couldn’t live alone on a plantation; she had to have a husband to help her run it.

“Melly, it’s like I said the other day. There isn’t anybody for girls to marry and they’ve got to marry someone.”

“Oh, they don’t have to marry! There’s nothing shameful in being a spinster. Look at Aunt Pitty. Oh, I’d rather see Cathleen dead! I know Cade would rather see her dead. It’s the end of the Calverts. Just think what her — what their children will be. Oh, Scarlett, have Pork saddle the horse quickly and you ride after her and tell her to come live with us!”

“Good Lord!” cried Scarlett, shocked at the matter-of-fact way in which Melanie was offering Tara. Scarlett certainly had no intention of feeding another mouth. She started to say this but something in Melanie’s stricken face halted the words.

“She wouldn’t come, Melly,” she amended. “You know she wouldn’t. She’s so proud and she’d think it was charity.”

“That’s true, that’s true!” said Melanie distractedly, watching the small cloud of red dust disappear down the road.

“You’ve been with me for months,” thought Scarlett grimly, looking at her sister-inlaw, “and it’s never occurred to you that it’s charity you’re living on. And I guess it never will. You’re one of those people the war didn’t change and you go right on thinking and acting just like nothing had happened — like we were still rich as Croesus and had more food than we know what to do with and guests didn’t matter. I guess I’ve got you on my neck for the rest of my life. But I won’t have Cathleen too.”

When the soldiers began arriving almost daily, Mammy protested against their being allowed to use the bedrooms. Always she feared lest some louse had escaped her. Rather than argue the matter, Scarlett turned the parlor with its deep velvet rug into a dormitory. Mammy cried out equally loudly at the sacrilege of soldiers being permitted to sleep on Miss Ellen’s rug but Scarlett was firm. They had to sleep somewhere.
Of each soldier, they asked eagerly of Ashley. Suellen, bridling, always asked news of Mr. Kennedy. But none of the soldiers had ever heard of them nor were they inclined to talk about the missing. It was enough that they themselves were alive, and they did not care to think of the thousands in unmarked graves who would never come home.

The family tried to bolster Melanie’s courage after each of these disappointments. Of course, Ashley hadn’t died in prison. Some Yankee chaplain would have written if this were true. Of course, he was coming home but his prison was so far away. Why, goodness, it took days riding on a train to make the trip and if Ashley was walking, like these men . . . Why hadn’t he written? Well, darling, you know what the mails are now — so uncertain and slipshod even where mail routes are re-established. But suppose — suppose he had died on the way home. Now, Melanie, some Yankee woman would have surely written us about it! . . . Yankee women! Bah! . . . Melly, there ARE some nice Yankee women. Oh, yes, there are! God couldn’t make a whole nation without having some nice women in it! Scarlett, you remember we did meet a nice Yankee woman at Saratoga that time — Scarlett, tell Melly about her!

“Nice, my foot!” replied Scarlert. “She asked me how many bloodhounds we kept to chase our darkies with! I agree with Melly. I never saw a nice Yankee, male or female. But don’t cry, Melly! Ashley’ll come home. It’s a long walk and maybe — maybe he hasn’t got any boots

But, Uncle Peter —”

“Huccome you leave Miss Pitty by herseff lak dis w’en she so scary lak? You know well’s Ah do Miss Pitty ain’ never live by herseff .

“Now, hesh!” said Mammy tartly,for it sat ill upon her to hear Tara referred to as an “ole farm.”

Uncle Peter gave her a withering look.

“You young Misses ought ter tek shame, leavin’ po’ Miss Pitty ‘lone, wid half her frens daid an’ de other half in Macom, an’ ‘Lanta full of Yankee sojers an’ trashy free issue niggers.”

The two girls had borne the castigation with straight faces as long as they could, but the thought of Aunt Pitty sending Peter to scold them and bring them back bodily to Atlanta was too much for their control. They burst into laughter and hung on each other’s shoulders for support. Naturally, Pork and Dilcey and Mammy gave vent to loud guffaws at hearing the detractor of their beloved Tara set at naught. Suellen and Carreen giggled and even Gerald’s face wore a vague smile. Everyone laughed except Peter, who shifted from one large splayed foot to the other in mounting indignation.

“Whut’s wrong wid you, nigger?” inquired Mammy with a grin. “Is you gittin’ too ole ter perteck yo’ own Missus?”

Peter was outraged.

“Too ole! Me too ole? No, Ma’m! Ah kin perteck Miss Pitty lak Ah allus done. Peter drew himself to his full height as he vindicated himself. “Ah ain’ talkin’ about perteckin’. Ah’s talkin’ ‘bout how it LOOK.”

“How who look?”

Scarlett snatched the letter from his hand. It was addressed to Melly in Miss Pitty’s writing but that did not make her hesitate a moment. She ripped it open and Miss Pitty’s inclosed note fell to the ground. Within the envelope there was a piece of folded paper, grimy from the dirty pocket in which it had been carried, creased and ragged about the edges. It bore the inscription in Ashley’s hand: “Mrs. George Ashley Wilkes, Care Miss Sarah Jane Hamilton, Atlanta, or Twelve Oaks, Jonesboro, Ga.”

With fingers that shook, she opened it and read:

“Beloved, I am coming home to you —”

Tears began to stream down her face so that she could not read and her heart swelled up until she felt she could not bear the joy of it. Clutching the letter to her, she raced up the porch steps and down the hall, past the parlor where all the inhabitants of Tara were getting in one another’s way as they worked over the unconscious Melanie, and into Ellen’s office. She shut the door and locked it and flung herself down on the sagging old sofa crying, laughing, kissing the letter.

“Beloved,” she whispered, “I am coming home to you.”

Will Benteen

Will Benteen was another soldier, like the nameless boy, who arrived unconscious across the saddle of a comrade. Will was acutely ill with pneumonia and when the girls put him to bed, they feared he would soon join the boy in the burying ground.

He had the sallow malarial face of the south Georgia Cracker, pale pinkish hair and washed-out blue eyes which even in delirium were patient and mild. One of his legs was gone at the knee and to the stump was fitted a roughly whittled wooden peg. He was obviously a Cracker, just as the boy they had buried so short a while ago was obviously a planter’s son. Just how the girls knew this they could not say. Certainly Will was no dirtier, no more hairy, no more lice infested than many fine gentlemen who came to Tara. Certainly the language he used in his delirium was no less grammatical than that of the Tarleton twins. But they knew instinctively, as they knew thoroughbred horses from scrubs, that he was not of their class. But this knowledge did not keep them from laboring to save him.

Emaciated from a year in a Yankee prison, exhausted by his long tramp on his ill-fitting wooden peg, he had little strength to combat pneumonia and for days he lay in the bed moaning, trying to get up, fighting battles over again. Never once did he call for mother, wife, sister or sweetheart and this omission worried Carreen.

“A man ought to have some folks,” she said. “And he sounds like he didn’t have a soul in the world.”

For all his lankiness he was tough, and good nursing pulled him through. The day came when his pale blue eyes, perfectly cognizant of his surroundings, fell upon Carreen sitting beside him, telling her rosary beads, the morning sun shining through her fair hair.

“Then you warn’t a dream, after all,” he said, in his flat toneless voice. “I hope I ain’t troubled you too much, Ma’m.”

His convalescence was a long one and he lay quietly looking out of the window at the magnolias and causing very little trouble to anyone. Carreen liked him because of his placid and unembarrassed silences. She would sit beside him through the long hot afternoons, fanning him and saying nothing.

Carreen had very little to say these days as she moved, delicate and wraithlike, about the tasks which were within her strength. She prayed a good deal, for when Scarlett came into her room without knocking, she always found her on her knees by her bed. The sight never failed to annoy her, for Scarlett felt that the time for prayer had passed. If God had seen fit to punish them so, then God could very well do without prayers. Religion had always been a bargaining process with Scarlett. She promised God good behavior in exchange for favors. God had broken the bargain time and again, to her way of thinking, and she felt that she owed Him nothing at all now. And whenever she found Carreen on her knees when she should have been taking an afternoon nap or doing the mending, she felt that Carreen was shirking her share of the burdens.

She gave her approval to the plan of hiring out the horse even though it meant the family would be without any means of transportation temporarily. Suellen would be especially grieved at this. Her greatest joy lay in going to Jonesboro or Fayetteville with Will when he drove over on business. Adorned in the assembled best of the family, she called on old friends, heard all the gossip of the County and felt herself again Miss O’Hara of Tara. Suellen never missed the opportunity to leave the plantation and give herself airs among people who did not know she weeded the garden and made beds.

Miss Fine Airs will just have to do without gadding for two weeks, thought Scarlett, and we’ll have to put up with her nagging and her bawling.

Melanie joined them on the veranda, the baby in her arms, and spreading an old blanket on the floor, set little Beau down to crawl. Since Ashley’s letter Melanie had divided her time between glowing, singing happiness and anxious longing. But happy or depressed, she was too thin, too white. She did her share of the work uncomplainingly but she was always ailing. Old Dr. Fontaine diagnosed her trouble as female complaint and concurred with Dr. Meade in saying she should never have had Beau. And he said frankly that another baby would kill her.

“When I was over to Fayetteville today,” said Will, “I found somethin’ right cute that I thought would interest you ladies and I brought it home.” He fumbled in his back pants pocket and brought out the wallet of calico, stiffened with bark, which Carreen had made him. From it, he drew a Confederate bill.

“If you think Confederate money is cute, Will, I certainly don’t,” said Scarlett shortly, for the very sight of Confederate money made her mad. “We’ve got three thousand dollars of it in Pa’s trunk this minute, and Mammy’s after me to let her paste it over the holes in the attic walls so the draft won’t get her. And I think I’ll do it. Then it’ll be good for something.”

“‘Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,’” said Melanie with a sad smile. “Don’t do that, Scarlett. Keep it for Wade. He’ll be proud of it some day.”

“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about imperious Caesar,” said Will, patiently, “but what I’ve got is in line with what you’ve just said about Wade, Miss Melly. It’s a poem, pasted on the back of this bill. I know Miss Scarlett ain’t much on poems but I thought this might interest her.”

He turned the bill over. On its back was pasted a strip of coarse brown wrapping paper, inscribed in pale homemade ink. Will cleared his throat and read slowly and with difficulty.

Chapter 31
On a cold January afternoon in 1866, Scarlett sat in the office writing a letter to Aunt Pitty, explaining in detail for the tenth time why neither she, Melanie nor Ashley could come back to Atlanta to live with her. She wrote impatiently because she knew Aunt Pitty would read no farther than the opening lines and then write her again, wailing: “But I’m afraid to live by myself!”

Her hands were chilled and she paused to rub them together and to scuff her feet deeper into the strip of old quilting wrapped about them. The soles of her slippers were practically gone and were reinforced with pieces of carpet. The carpet kept her feet off the floor but did little to keep them warm. That morning Will had taken the horse to Jonesboro to get him shod. Scarlett thought grimly that things were indeed at a pretty pass when horses had shoes and people’s feet were as bare as yard dogs’.

She picked up her quill to resume her writing but laid it down when she heard Will coming in at the back door. She heard the thump-thump of his wooden leg in the hall outside the office and then he stopped. She waited for a moment for him to enter and when he made no move she called to him. He came in, his ears red from the cold, his pinkish hair awry, and stood looking down at her, a faintly humorous smile on his lips.

“Miss Scarlett,” he questioned, “just how much cash money have you got?”

“Are you going to try to marry me for my money, Will?” she asked somewhat crossly.

“No, Ma’m. But I just wanted to know.”

She stared at him inquiringly. Will didn’t look serious, but then he never looked serious. However, she felt that something was wrong.

“I’ve got ten dollars in gold,” she said. “The last of that Yankee’s money.”

“Well, Ma’m, that won’t be enough.”

“Enough for what?”

She looked at him with flashing eyes.

“Oh, damn the Yankees!” she cried. “Isn’t it enough that they’ve licked us and beggared us without turning loose scoundrels on us?”

The war was over, peace had been declared, but the Yankees could still rob her, they could still starve her, they could still drive her from her house. And fool that she was, she had thought through weary months that if she could just hold out until spring, everything would be all right. This crushing news brought by Will, coming on top of a year of back-breaking work and hope deferred, was the last straw.

“Oh, Will, and I thought our troubles were all over when the war ended!”

“No’m.” Will raised his lantern-jawed, country-looking face and gave her a long steady look. “Our troubles are just gettin’ started.”

“How much extra taxes do they want us to pay?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

She was struck dumb for a moment. Three hundred dollars! It might just as well be three million dollars.

“Why,” she floundered, “why — why, then we’ve got to raise three hundred, somehow.”

“Yes’m — and a rainbow and a moon or two.”

“Oh, but Will! They couldn’t sell out Tara. Why —”

His mild pale eyes showed more hate and bitterness than she thought possible.

“Oh, couldn’t they? Well, they could and they will and they’ll like doin’ it! Miss Scarlett, the country’s gone plumb to hell, if you’ll pardon me. Those Carpetbaggers and Scallawags can vote and most of us Democrats can’t. Can’t no Democrat in this state vote if he was on the tax books for more than two thousand dollars in ‘sixty-five. That lets out folks like your pa and Mr. Tarleton and the McRaes and the Fontaine boys. Can’t nobody vote who was a colonel and over in the war and, Miss Scarlett, I bet this state’s got more colonels than any state in the Confederacy. And can’t nobody vote who held office under the Confederate government and that lets out everybody from the notaries to the judges, and the woods are full of folks like that. Fact is, the way the Yankees have framed up that amnesty oath, can’t nobody who was somebody before the war vote at all. Not the smart folks nor the quality folks nor the rich folks.

Huh! I could vote if I took their damned oath. I didn’t have any money in ‘sixty-five and I certainly warn’t a colonel or nothin’ remarkable. But I ain’t goin’ to take their oath. Not by a dinged sight! If the Yankees had acted right, I’d have taken their oath of allegiance but I ain’t now. I can be restored to the Union but I can’t be reconstructed into it. I ain’t goin’ to take their oath even if I don’t never vote again — But scum like that Hilton feller, he can vote, and scoundrels like Jonas Wilkerson and pore whites like the Slatterys and no-counts like the MacIntoshes, they can vote. And they’re runnin’ things now. And if they want to come down on you for extra taxes a dozen times, they can do it. Just like a nigger can kill a white man and not get hung or —” He paused, embarrassed, and the memory of what had happened to a lone white woman on an isolated farm near Lovejoy was in both their minds. . . . “Those niggers can do anything against us and the Freedmen’s Bureau and the soldiers will back them up with guns and we can’t vote or do nothin’ about it.”

“Vote!” she cried. “Vote! What on earth has voting got to do with all this, Will? It’s taxes we’re talking about. . . . Will, everybody knows what a good plantation Tara is. We could mortgage it for enough to pay the taxes, if we had to.”

“Miss Scarlett, you ain’t any fool but sometimes you talk like one. Who’s got any money to lend you on this property? Who except the Carpetbaggers who are tryin’ to take Tara away from you? Why, everybody’s got land. Everybody’s land pore. You can’t give away land.”

“I’ve got those diamond earbobs I got off that Yankee. We could sell them.”

“Miss Scarlett, who ‘round here has got money for earbobs? Folks ain’t got money to buy side meat, let alone gewgaws. If you’ve got ten dollars in gold, I take oath that’s more than most folks have got.”

They were silent again and Scarlett felt as if she were butting her head against a stone wall. There had been so many stone walls to butt against this last year.

Scarlett with Ashley in the orchard

She went through the orchard under the bare boughs and the damp weeds beneath them wet her feet. She could hear the sound of the axe ringing as Ashley split into rails the logs hauled from the swamp. Replacing the fences the Yankees had so blithely burned was a long hard task.

She rounded a thicket of pomegranate trees which were shaking bare limbs in the cold wind and saw him leaning on his axe, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.

“They say Abe Lincoln got his start splitting rails,” he said as she came up to him. “Just think to what heights I may climb!”

She frowned. He was always saying light things like this about their hardships. They were deadly serious matters to her and sometimes she was almost irritated at his remarks.

Abruptly she told him Will’s news, tersely and in short words, feeling a sense of relief as she spoke. Surely, he’d have something helpful to offer. He said nothing but, seeing her shiver, he took his coat and placed it about her shoulders.

“Well,” she said finally, “doesn’t it occur to you that we’ll have to get the money somewhere?”

“Yes,” he said, “but where?”

“I’m asking you,” she replied, annoyed. The sense of relief at unburdening herself had disappeared. Even if he couldn’t help, why didn’t he say something comforting, even if it was only: “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

He smiled.

“In all these months since I’ve been home I’ve only heard of one person, Rhett Butler, who actually has money,” he said.

Aunt Pittypat had written Melanie the week before that Rhett was back in Atlanta with a carriage and two fine horses and pocketfuls of greenbacks. She had intimated, however, that he didn’t come by them honestly. Aunt Pitty had a theory, largely shared by Atlanta, that Rhett had managed to get away with the mythical millions of the Confederate treasury.

“Don’t let’s talk about him,” said Scarlett shortly. “He’s a skunk if ever there was one. What’s to become of us all?”

Ashley put down the axe and looked away and his eyes seemed to be journeying to some far-off country where she could not follow.

“I wonder,” he said. “I wonder not only what will become of us at Tara but what will become of everybody in the South.”

She felt like snapping out abruptly: “To hell with everybody in the South! What about us?” but she remained silent because the tired feeling was back on her more strongly than ever. Ashley wasn’t being any help at all.

“In the end what will happen will be what has happened whenever a civilization breaks up. The people who have brains and courage come through and the ones who haven’t are winnowed out. At least, it has been interesting, if not comfortable, to witness a Gotterdammerung.”

“A what?”

“A dusk of the gods. Unfortunately, we Southerners did think we were gods.”

“For Heaven’s sake, Ashley Wilkes! Don’t stand there and talk nonsense at me when it’s us who are going to be winnowed out!”

Something of her exasperated weariness seemed to penetrate his mind, calling it back from its wanderings, for he raised her hands with tenderness and, turning them palm up, looked at the calluses.

“These are the most beautiful hands I know,” he said and kissed each palm lightly. “They are beautiful because they are strong and every callus is a medal, Scarlett, every blister an award for bravery and unselfishness. They’ve been roughened for all of us, your father, the girls, Melanie, the baby, the negroes and for me. My dear, I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Here stands an impractical fool talking tommyrot about dead gods when living people are in danger.’ Isn’t that true?”