Margaret Mitchell - Gone with the Wind

“The Yankees never got to the Tarletons. They’re off the main road, like we are, but they did get to the Calverts and they stole all their stock and poultry and got all the darkies to run off with them—” Sally began.

Grandma interrupted.

“Hah! They promised all the black wenches silk dresses and gold earbobs—that’s what they did. And Cathleen Calvert said some of the troopers went off with the black fools behind them on their saddles. Well, all they’ll get will be yellow babies and I can’t say that Yankee blood will improve the stock.”

“Oh, Mama Fontaine!”

“Don’t pull such a shocked face, Jane. We’re all married, aren’t we? And, God knows, we’ve seen mulatto babies before this.”

“Why didn’t they burn the Calverts’ house?”

“The house was saved by the combined accents of the second Mrs. Calvert and that Yankee overseer of hers, Hilton,” said Old Miss, who always referred to the ex-governess as the “second Mrs. Calvert,” although the first Mrs. Calvert had been dead twenty years.

“’We are staunch Union sympathizers,’” mimicked the old lady, twanging the words through her long thin nose. “Cathleen said the two of them swore up hill and down dale that the whole passel of Calverts were Yankees. And Mr. Calvert dead in the Wilderness! And Raiford at Gettysburg and Cade in Virginia with the army! Cathleen was so mortified she said she’d rather the house had been burned. She said Cade would bust when he came home and heard about it. But then, that’s what a man gets for marrying a Yankee woman—no pride, no decency, always thinking about their own skins… How come they didn’t burn Tara, Scarlett?”

For a moment Scarlett paused before answering. She knew the very next question would be: “And how are all your folks? And how is your dear mother?” She knew she could not tell them Ellen was dead. She knew that if she spoke those words or even let herself think of them in the presence of these sympathetic women, she would burst into a storm of tears and cry until she was sick. And she could not let herself cry. She had not really cried since she came home and she knew that if she once let down the floodgates, her closely husbanded courage would all be gone. But she knew, too, looking with confusion at the friendly faces about her, that if she withheld the news of Ellen’s death, the Fontaines would never forgive her. Grandma in particular was devoted to Ellen and there were very few people in the County for whom the old lady gave a snap of her skinny fingers.

“Well, speak up,” said Grandma, looking sharply at her. “Don’t you know, Miss?”

“Well, you see, I didn’t get home till the day after the battle,” she answered hastily. “The Yankees were all gone then. Pa—Pa told me that—that he got them not to burn the house because Suellen and Carreen were so ill with typhoid they couldn’t be moved.”

“That’s the first time I ever heard of a Yankee doing a decent thing,” said Grandma, as if she regretted hearing anything good about the invaders. “And how are the girls now?”

“Oh, they are better, much better, almost well but quite weak,” answered Scarlett. Then, seeing the question she feared hovering on the old lady’s lips, she cast hastily about for some other topic of conversation.

“I—I wonder if you could lend us something to eat? The Yankees cleaned us out like a swarm of locusts. But, if you are on short rations, just tell me so plainly and—”

“Send over Pork with a wagon and you shall have half of what we’ve got, rice, meal, ham, some chickens,” said Old Miss, giving Scarlett a sudden keen look.

“Oh, that’s too much! Really, I—”

“Not a word! I won’t hear it. What are neighbors for?”

“You are so kind that I can’t—But I have to be going now. The folks at home will be worrying about me.”

Grandma rose abruptly and took Scarlett by the arm.

“You two stay here,” she commanded, pushing Scarlett toward the back porch. “I have a private word for this child. Help me down the steps, Scarlett.”

Young Miss and Sally said good-by and promised to come calling soon. They were devoured by curiosity as to what Grandma had to say to Scarlett but unless she chose to tell them, they would never know. Old ladies were so difficult, Young Miss whispered to Sally as they went back to their sewing.

Scarlett stood with her hand on the horse’s bridle, a dull feeling at her heart.

“Now,” said Grandma, peering into her face, “what’s wrong at Tara? What are you keeping back?”

Scarlett looked up into the keen old eyes and knew she could tell the truth, without tears. No one could cry in the presence of Grandma Fontaine without her express permission.

“Mother is dead,” she said flatly.

The hand on her arm tightened until it pinched and the wrinkled lids over the yellow eyes blinked.

“Did the Yankees kill her?”

“She died of typhoid. Died—the day before I came home.”

“Don’t think about it,” said Grandma sternly and Scarlett saw her swallow. “And your Pa?”

“Pa is—Pa is not himself.”

“What do you mean? Speak up. Is he ill?”

“The shock—he is so strange—he is not—”

“Don’t tell me he’s not himself. Do you mean his mind is unhinged?”

It was a relief to hear the truth put so baldly. How good the old lady was to offer no sympathy that would make her cry.

“Yes,” she said dully, “he’s lost his mind. He acts dazed and sometimes he can’t seem to remember that Mother is dead. Oh, Old Miss, it’s more than I can stand to see him sit by the hour, waiting for her and so patiently too, and he used to have no more patience than a child. But it’s worse when he does remember that she’s gone. Every now and then, after he’s sat still with his ear cocked listening for her, he jumps up suddenly and stumps out of the house and down to the burying ground. And then he comes dragging back with the tears all over his face and he says over and over till I could scream: ‘Katie Scarlett, Mrs. O’Hara is dead. Your mother is dead,’ and it’s just like I was hearing it again for the first time. And sometimes, late at night, I hear him calling her and I get out of bed and go to him and tell him she’s down at the quarters with a sick darky. And he fusses because she’s always tiring herself out nursing people. And it’s so hard to get him back to bed. He’s like a child. Oh, I wish Dr. Fontaine was here! I know he could do something for Pa! And Melanie needs a doctor too. She isn’t getting over her baby like she should—”

“Melly—a baby? And she’s with you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s Melly doing with you? Why isn’t she in Macon with her aunt and her kinfolks? I never thought you liked her any too well, Miss, for all she was Charles’ sister. Now, tell me all about it.”

“It’s a long story, Old Miss. Don’t you want to go back in the house and sit down?”

“I can stand,” said Grandma shortly. “And if you told your story in front of the others, they’d be bawling and making you feel sorry for yourself. Now, let’s have it.”

Scarlett began haltingly with the siege and Melanie’s condition, but as her story progressed beneath the sharp old eyes which never faltered in their gaze, she found words, words of power and horror. It all came back to her, the sickeningly hot day of the baby’s birth, the agony of fear, the flight and Rhett’s desertion. She spoke of the wild darkness of the night, the blazing camp fires which might be friends or foes, the gaunt chimneys which met her gaze in the morning sun, the dead men and horses along the road, the hunger, the desolation, the fear that Tara had been burned.

“I thought if I could just get home to Mother, she could manage everything and I could lay down the weary load. On the way home I thought the worst had already happened to me, but when I knew she was dead I knew what the worst really was.”