Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind

“Just a few more days for to tote the weary load—”

“Just a few more steps,” hummed her brain, over and over, “just a few more steps for to tote the weary load.”

Then they topped the rise and before them lay the oaks of Tara, a towering dark mass against the darkening sky. Scarlett looked hastily to see if there was a light anywhere. There was none.

“They are gone!” said her heart, like cold lead in her breast. “Gone!”

She turned the horse’s head into the driveway, and the cedars, meeting over their heads cast them into midnight blackness. Peering up the long tunnel of darkness, straining her eyes she saw ahead—or did she see? Were her tired eyes playing her tricks?—the white bricks of Tara blurred and indistinct. Home! Home! The dear white walls, the windows with the fluttering curtains, the wide verandas—were they all there ahead of her, in the gloom? Or did the darkness mercifully conceal such a horror as the MacIntosh house?

The avenue seemed miles long and the horse, pulling stubbornly at her hand, plopped slower and slower. Eagerly her eyes searched the darkness. The roof seemed to be intact. Could it be—could it be—? No, it wasn’t possible. War stopped for nothing, not even Tara, built to last five hundred years. It could not have passed over Tara.

Then the shadowy outline did take form. She pulled the horse forward faster. The white walls did show there through the darkness. And untarnished by smoke. Tara had escaped! Home! She dropped the bridle and ran the last few steps, leaped forward with an urge to clutch the walls themselves in her arms. Then she saw a form, shadowy in the dimness, emerging from the blackness of the front veranda and standing at the top of the steps. Tara was not deserted. Someone was home!

A cry of joy rose to her throat and died there. The house was so dark and still and the figure did not move or call to her. What was wrong? What was wrong? Tara stood intact, yet shrouded with the same eerie quiet that hung over the whole stricken countryside. Then the figure moved. Stiffly and slowly, it came down the steps.

“Pa?” she whispered huskily, doubting almost that it was he. “It’s me—Katie Scarlett. I’ve come home.”

Gerald moved toward her, silent as a sleepwalker, his stiff leg dragging. He came close to her, looking at her in a dazed way as if he believed she was part of a dream. Putting out his hand, he laid it on her shoulder. Scarlett felt it tremble, tremble as if he had been awakened from a nightmare into a half-sense of reality.

“Daughter,” he said with an effort. “Daughter.”

Then he was silent.

Why—he’s an old man! thought Scarlett.

Gerald’s shoulders sagged. In the face which she could only see dimly, there was none of the virility, the restless vitality of Gerald, and the eyes that looked into hers had almost the same fear-stunned look that lay in little Wade’s eyes. He was only a little old man and broken.

And now, fear of unknown things seized her, leaped swiftly out of the darkness at her and she could only stand and stare at him, all the flood of questioning dammed up at her lips.

From the wagon the faint wailing sounded again and Gerald seemed to rouse himself with an effort.

“It’s Melanie and her baby,” whispered Scarlett rapidly. “She’s very ill—I brought her home.”

Gerald dropped his hand from her arm and straightened his shoulders. As he moved slowly to the side of the wagon, there was a ghostly semblance of the old host of Tara welcoming guests, as if Gerald spoke words from out of shadowy memory.

“Cousin Melanie!”

Melanie’s voice murmured indistinctly.

“Cousin Melanie, this is your home. Twelve Oaks is burned. You must stay with us.”

Thoughts of Melanie’s prolonged suffering spurred Scarlett to action. The present was with her again, the necessity of laying Melanie and her child on a soft bed and doing those small things for her that could be done.

“She must be carried. She can’t walk.”

There was a scuffle of feet and a dark figure emerged from the cave of the front hall. Pork ran down the steps.

“Miss Scarlett! Miss Scarlett!” he cried.

Scarlett caught him by the arms. Pork, part and parcel of Tara, as dear as the bricks and the cool corridors! She felt his tears stream down on her hands as he patted her clumsily, crying: “Sho is glad you back! Sho is—”

Prissy burst into tears and incoherent mumblings: “Poke! Poke, honey!” And little Wade, encouraged by the weakness of his elders, began sniffling: “Wade thirsty!”

Scarlett caught them all in hand.

“Miss Melanie is in the wagon and her baby too. Pork, you must carry her upstairs very carefully and put her in the back company room. Prissy, take the baby and Wade inside and give Wade a drink of water. Is Mammy here, Pork? Tell her I want her.”

Galvanized by the authority in her voice, Pork approached the wagon and fumbled at the backboard. A moan was wrenched from Melanie as he half-lifted, half-dragged her from the feather tick on which she had lain so many hours. And then she was in Pork’s strong arms, her head drooping like a child’s across his shoulder. Prissy, holding the baby and dragging Wade by the hand, followed them up the wide steps and disappeared into the blackness of the hall.

Scarlett’s bleeding fingers sought her father’s hand urgently.

“Did they get well, Pa?”

“The girls are recovering.”

Silence fell and in the silence an idea too monstrous for words took form. She could not, could not force it to her lips. She swallowed and swallowed but a sudden dryness seemed to have stuck the sides of her throat together. Was this the answer to the frightening riddle of Tara’s silence? As if answering the question in her mind Gerald spoke.

“Your mother—” he said and stopped.

“And—Mother?”

“Your mother died yesterday.”

Her father’s arm held tightly in her own, Scarlett felt her way down the wide dark hall which, even in its blackness, was as familiar as her own mind. She avoided the high-backed chairs, the empty gun rack, the old sideboard with its protruding claw feet, and she felt herself drawn by instinct to the tiny office at the back of the house where Ellen always sat, keeping her endless accounts. Surely, when she entered that room, Mother would again be sitting there before the secretary and would look up, quill poised, and rise with sweet fragrance and rustling hoops to meet her tired daughter. Ellen could not be dead, not even though Pa had said it, said it over and over like a parrot that knows only one phrase: “She died yesterday—she died yesterday—she died yesterday.”

Queer that she should feel nothing now, nothing except a weariness that shackled her limbs with heavy iron chains and a hunger that made her knees tremble. She would think of Mother later. She must put her mother out of her mind now, else she would stumble stupidly like Gerald or sob monotonously like Wade.

Pork came down the wide dark steps toward them, hurrying to press close to Scarlett like a cold animal toward a fire.

“Lights?” she questioned. “Why is the house so dark, Pork? Bring candles.”

“Dey tuck all de candles, Miss Scarlett, all ’cept one we been usin’ ter fine things in de dahk wid, an’ it’s ’bout gone. Mammy been usin’ a rag in a dish of hawg fat fer a light fer nussin’ Miss Careen an’ Miss Suellen.”

“Bring what’s left of the candle,” she ordered. “Bring it into Mother’s—into the office.”

Pork pattered into the dining room and Scarlett groped her way into the inky small room and sank down on the sofa. Her father’s arm still lay in the crook of hers, helpless, appealing, trusting, as only the hands of the very young and the very old can be.