[Part 21] "Gone With The Wind" by Margaret Mitchell

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐋𝐈𝐈𝐈.

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IT WAS ONE OF THOSE RARE DECEMBER DAYS when the sun was almost as warm as Indian summer.

Dry red leaves still clung to the oak in Aunt Pitty’s yard and a faint yellow green still persisted in the dying grass.

Scarlett, with the baby in her arms, stepped out onto the side porch and sat down in a rocking chair in a patch of sunshine.

She was wearing a new green challis dress trimmed with yards and yards of black rickrack braid and a new lace house cap which Aunt Pitty had made for her.

Both were very becoming to her and she knew it and took great pleasure in them.

How good it was to look pretty again after the long months of looking so dreadful!

As she sat rocking the baby and humming to herself, she heard the sound of hooves coming up the side street and, peering curiously through the tangle of dead vines on the porch, she saw Rhett Butler riding toward the house.

He had been away from Atlanta for months, since just after Gerald died, since long before Ella Lorena was born.

She had missed him but she now wished ardently that there was some way to avoid seeing him.

In fact, the sight of his dark face brought a feeling of guilty panic to her breast.

A matter in which Ashley was concerned lay on her conscience and she did not wish to discuss it with Rhett, but she knew he would force the discussion, no matter how disinclined she might be.

He drew up at the gate and swung lightly to the ground and she thought, staring nervously at him, that he looked just like an illustration in a book Wade was always pestering her to read aloud.

“All he needs is earrings and a cutlass between his teeth,” she thought.

“Well, pirate or no, he’s not going to cut my throat today if I can help it.”

As he came up the walk she called a greeting to him, summoning her sweetest smile.

How lucky that she had on her new dress and the becoming cap and looked so pretty!

As his eyes went swiftly over her, she knew he thought her pretty, too.

“A new baby!

Why, Scarlett, this is a surprise!” he laughed, leaning down to push the blanket away from Ella Lorena’s small ugly face.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, blushing.

“How are you, Rhett?

You’ve been away a long time.”

“So I have.

Let me hold the baby, Scarlett.

Oh, I know how to hold babies.

I have many strange accomplishments.

Well, he certainly looks like Frank.

All except the whiskers, but give him time.”

“I hope not.

It’s a girl.”

“A girl?

That’s better still.

Boys are such nuisances.

Don’t ever have any more boys, Scarlett.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to reply tartly that she never intended to have any more babies, boys or girls, but she caught herself in time and smiled, casting about quickly in her mind for some topic of conversation that would put off the bad moment when the subject she feared would come up for discussion.

“Did you have a nice trip, Rhett?

Where did you go this time?”

“Oh—Cuba—New Orleans—other places.

Here, Scarlett, take the baby.

She’s beginning to slobber and I can’t get to my handkerchief.

She’s a fine baby, I’m sure, but she’s wetting my shirt bosom.”

She took the child back into her lap and Rhett settled himself lazily on the banister and took a cigar from a silver case.

“You are always going to New Orleans,” she said and pouted a little.

“And you never will tell me what you do there.”

“I am a hard-working man, Scarlett, and perhaps my business takes me there.”

“Hard-working!

You!” she laughed impertinently.

“You never worked in your life.

You’re too lazy.

All you ever do is finance Carpetbaggers in their thieving and take half the profits and bribe Yankee officials to let you in on schemes to rob us taxpayers.”

He threw back his head and laughed.

“And how you would love to have money enough to bribe officials, so you could do likewise!”

“The very idea—”

She began to ruffle.

“But perhaps you will make enough money to get into bribery on a large scale some day.

Maybe you’ll get rich off those convicts you leased.”

“Oh,” she said, a little disconcerted, “how did you find out about my gang so soon?”

“I arrived last night and spent the evening in the Girl of the Period Saloon, where one hears all the news of the town.

It’s a clearing house for gossip.

Better than a ladies’ sewing circle.

Everyone told me that you’d leased a gang and put that little plug-ugly, Gallegher, in charge to work them to death.”

“That’s a lie,” she angrily.

“He won’t work them to death.

I’ll see to that.”

“Will you?”

“Of course I will!

How can you even insinuate such things?”

“Oh, I do beg your pardon, Mrs. Kennedy!

I know your motives are always above reproach.

However, Johnnie Gallegher is a cold little bully if I ever saw one.

Better watch him or you’ll be having trouble when the inspector comes around.”

“You tend to your business and I’ll tend to mine,” she indignantly.

“And I don’t want to talk about convicts any more.

Everybody’s been hateful about them.

My gang is my own business— And you haven’t told me yet what you do in New Orleans.

You go there so often that everybody says—”

She paused.

She had not intended to say so much.

“What do they say?”

“Well—that you have a sweetheart there.

That you are going to get married.

Are you, Rhett?”

She had been curious about this for so long that she could not refrain from asking the point-blank question.

A queer little pang of jealousy jabbed at her at the thought of Rhett getting married, although why that should be she did not know.

His bland eyes grew suddenly alert and he caught her gaze and held it until a little blush crept up into her cheeks.

“Would it matter much to you?”

“Well, I should hate to lose your friendship,” she said primly and, with an attempt at disinterestedness, bent down to pull the blanket closer about Ella Lorena’s head.

He laughed suddenly, shortly, and said: “Look at me, Scarlett.”

She looked up unwillingly, her blush deepening.

“You can tell your curious friends that when I marry it will be because I couldn’t get the woman I wanted in any other way.

And I’ve never yet wanted a woman bad enough to marry her.”

Now she was indeed confused and embarrassed, for she remembered the night on this very porch during the siege when he had said: “I am not a marrying man” and casually suggested that she become his mistress—remembered, too, the terrible day when he was in jail and was shamed by the memory.

A slow malicious smile went over his face as he read her eyes.

“But I will satisfy your vulgar curiosity since you ask such pointed questions.

It isn’t a sweetheart that takes me to New Orleans.

It’s a child, a little boy.”

“A little boy!” The shock of this unexpected information wiped out her confusion.

“Yes, he is my legal ward and I am responsible for him.

He’s in school in New Orleans.

I go there frequently to see him.”

“And take him presents?”

So, she thought, that’s how he always knows what kind of presents Wade likes!

“Yes,” he said shortly, unwillingly.

“Well, I never!

Is he handsome?”

“Too handsome for his own good.”

“Is he a nice little boy?”

“No. He’s a perfect hellion.

I wish he had never been born.

Boys are troublesome creatures.

Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

He looked suddenly angry and his brow was dark, as though he already regretted speaking of the matter at all.

“Well, not if you don’t want to tell me any more,” she said loftily, though she was burning for further information.

“But I just can’t see you in the role of a guardian,” and she laughed, hoping to disconcert him.

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“No, I don’t suppose you can.

Your vision is pretty limited.”

He said no more and smoked his cigar in silence for a while.

She cast about for some remark as rude as his but could think of none.

“I would appreciate it if you’d say nothing of this to anyone,” he said finally.

“Though I suppose that asking a woman to keep her mouth shut is asking the impossible.”

“I can keep a secret,” she said with injured dignity.

“Can you?

It’s nice to learn unsuspected things about friends.

Now, stop pouting, Scarlett.

I’m sorry I was rude but you deserved it for prying.

Give me a smile and let’s be pleasant for a minute or two before I take up an unpleasant subject.”

“Oh, dear!” she thought. “Now, he’s going to talk about Ashley and the mill!” and she hastened to smile and show her dimple to divert him.

“Where else did you go, Rhett?

You haven’t been in New Orleans all this time, have you?”

“No, for the last month I’ve been in Charleston.

My father died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.

I’m sure he wasn’t sorry to die, and I’m sure I’m not sorry he’s dead.”

“Rhett, what a dreadful thing to say!”

“It would be much more dreadful if I pretended to be sorry, when I wasn’t, wouldn’t it?

There was never any love lost between us.

I cannot remember when the old gentleman did not disapprove of me.

I was too much like his own father and he disapproved heartily of his father.

And as I grew older his disapproval of me became downright dislike, which, I admit, I did little to change.

All the things Father wanted me to do and be were such boring things.

And finally he threw me out into the world without a cent and no training whatsoever to be anything but a Charleston gentleman, a good pistol shot and an excellent poker player.

And he seemed to take it as a personal affront that I did not starve but put my poker playing to excellent advantage and supported myself royally by gambling.

He was so affronted at a Butler becoming a gambler that when I came home for the first time, he forbade my mother to see me.

And all during the war when I was blockading out of Charleston, Mother had to lie and slip off to see me.

Naturally that didn’t increase my love for him.”

“Oh, I didn’t know all that!”

“He was what is pointed out as a fine old gentleman of the old school which means that he was ignorant, thick headed, intolerant and incapable of thinking along any lines except what other gentlemen of the old school thought.

Everyone admired him tremendously for having cut me off and counted me as dead.

‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out.’

I was his right eye, his oldest son, and he plucked me out with a vengeance.”

He smiled a little, his eyes hard with amused memory.

“Well, I could forgive all that but I can’t forgive what he’s done to Mother and my sister since the war ended.

They’ve been practically destitute.

The plantation house was burned and the rice fields have gone back to marsh lands.

And the town house went for taxes and they’ve been living in two rooms that aren’t fit for darkies.

I’ve sent money to Mother, but Father has sent it back—tainted money, you see!—and several times I’ve gone to Charleston and given money, on the sly, to my sister.

But Father always found out and raised merry hell with her, till her life wasn’t worth living, poor girl.

And back the money came to me.

I don’t know how they’ve lived….

Yes, I do know.

My brother’s given what he could, though he hasn’t much to give and he won’t take anything from me either—speculator’s money is unlucky money, you see!

And the charity of their friends.

Your Aunt Eulalie, she’s been very kind.

She’s one of Mother’s best friends, you know.

She’s given them clothes and— Good God! My mother on charity!”

It was one of the few times she had ever seen him with his mask off, his face hard with honest hatred for his father and distress for his mother.

“Aunt ’Lalie!

But, good Heavens, Rhett, she hasn’t got anything much above what I send her!”

“Ah, so that’s where it comes from!

How ill bred of you, my dear, to brag of such a thing in the face of my humiliation.

You must let me reimburse you!”

“With pleasure,” said Scarlett, her mouth suddenly twisting into a grin, and he smiled back.

“Ah, Scarlett, how the thought of a dollar does make your eyes sparkle!

Are you sure you haven’t some Scotch or perhaps Jewish blood as well as Irish?”

“Don’t be hateful!

I didn’t mean to throw it in your face about Aunt ’Lalie.

But honestly, she thinks I’m made of money.

She’s always writing me for more and, God knows, I’ve got enough on my hands without supporting all of Charleston.

What did your father die of?”

“Genteel starvation, I think—and hope.

It served him right.

He was willing to let Mother and Rosemary starve with him.

Now that he’s dead, I can help them.

I’ve bought them a house on the Battery and they’ve servants to look after them.

But of course, they couldn’t let it be known that the money came from me.”

“Why not?”

“My dear, surely you know Charleston!

You’ve visited there.

My family may be poor but they have a position to uphold.

And they couldn’t uphold it if it were known that gambling money and speculator’s money and Carpetbag money was behind it.

No, they gave it out that Father left an enormous life insurance—that he’d beggared himself and starved himself to death to keep up the payments, so that after he died, they’d be provided for.

So he is looked upon as an even greater gentleman of the old school than before…. In fact, a martyr to his family.

I hope he’s turning in his grave at the knowledge that Mother and Rosemary are comfortable now, in spite of his efforts….

In a way, I’m sorry he’s dead because he wanted to die—was so glad to die.”

“Why?”

“Oh, he really died when Lee surrendered. You know the type.

He never could adjust himself to the new times and spent his time talking about the good old days.”

“Rhett, are all old folks like that?”

She was thinking of Gerald and what Will had said about him.

“Heavens, no!

Just look at your Uncle Henry and that old wild cat, Mr. Merriwether, just to name two.

They took a new lease on life when they marched out with the Home Guard and it seems to me that they’ve gotten younger and more peppery ever since.

I met old man Merriwether this morning driving René’s pie wagon and cursing the horse like an army mule skinner.

He told me he felt ten years younger since he escaped from the house and his daughter-in-law’s coddling and took to driving the wagon.

And your Uncle Henry enjoys fighting the Yankees in court and out and defending the widow and the orphan—free of charge, I fear—against the Carpetbaggers.

If there hadn’t been a war, he’d have retired long ago and nursed his rheumatism.

They’re young again because they are of use again and feel that they are needed.

And they like this new day that gives old men another chance.

But there are plenty of people, young people, who feel like my father and your father.

They can’t and won’t adjust and that brings me to the unpleasant subject I want to discuss with you, Scarlett.”

His sudden shift so disconcerted her that she stammered: “What—what—” and inwardly groaned: “Oh, Lord!

Now it’s coming.

I wonder if I can butter him down?”

“I shouldn’t have expected either truth or fair dealing from you, knowing you as I do.

But foolishly, I trusted you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do.

At any rate, you look very guilty.

As I was riding along Ivy Street a while ago, on my way to call on you, who should hail me from behind a hedge but Mrs. Ashley Wilkes!

Of course, I stopped and chatted with her.”

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“Indeed?”

“Yes, we had an enjoyable talk.

She told me she had always wanted to let me know how brave she thought I was to have struck a blow for the Confederacy, even at the eleventh hour.”

“Oh, fiddle-dee-dee! Melly’s a fool.

She might have died that night because you acted so heroic.”

“I imagine she would have thought her life given in a good cause.

And when I asked her what she was doing in Atlanta she looked quite surprised at my ignorance and told me that they were living here now and that you had been kind enough to make Mr. Wilkes a partner in your mill.”

“Well, what of it?” questioned Scarlett, shortly.

“When I lent you the money to buy that mill I made one stipulation, to which you agreed, and that was that it should not go to the support of Ashley Wilkes.”

“You are being very offensive.

I’ve paid you back your money and I own the mill and what I do with it is my own business.”

“Would you mind telling me how you made the money to pay back my loan?”

“I made it selling lumber, of course.”

“You made it with the money I lent you to give you your start.

That’s what you mean.

My money is being used to support Ashley.

You are a woman quite without honor and if you hadn’t repaid my loan, I’d take great pleasure in calling it in now and selling you out at public auction if you couldn’t pay.”

He spoke lightly but there was anger flickering in his eyes.

Scarlett hastily carried the warfare into the enemy’s territory.

“Why do you hate Ashley so much?

I believe you’re jealous of him.”

After she had spoken she could have bitten her tongue, for he threw back his head and laughed until she went red with mortification.

“Add conceit to dishonor,” he said.

“You’ll never get over being the belle of the County will you?

You’ll always think you’re the cutest little trick in shoe leather and that every man you meet is expiring for love of you.”

“I don’t either!” she cried hotly.

“But I just can’t see why you hate Ashley so much and that’s the only explanation I can think of.”

“Well, think something else, pretty charmer, for that’s the wrong explanation.

And as for hating Ashley— I don’t hate him any more than I like him.

In fact, my only emotion toward him and his kind is pity.”

“Pity?”

“Yes, and a little contempt.

Now, swell up like a gobbler and tell me that he is worth a thousand blackguards like me and that I shouldn’t dare be so presumptuous as to feel either pity or contempt for him.

And when you have finished swelling, I’ll tell you what I mean, if you’re interested.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I shall tell you, just the same, for I can’t bear for you to go on nursing your pleasant delusion of my jealousy.

I pity him because he ought to be dead and he isn’t.

And I have a contempt for him because he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that his world is gone.”

There was something familiar in the idea he expressed.

She had a confused memory of having heard similar words but she could not remember when and where.

She did not think very hard about it for her anger was hot.

“If you had your way all the decent men in the South would be dead!”

“And if they had their way, I think Ashley’s kind would prefer to be dead.

Dead with neat stones above them, saying: ‘Here lies a soldier of the Confederacy, dead for the Southland’ or ‘Dulce et decorum est—’ or any of the other popular epitaphs.”

“I don’t see why!”

“You never see anything that isn’t written in letters a foot high and then shoved under your nose, do you?

If they were dead, their troubles would be over, there’d be no problems to face, problems that have no solutions.

Moreover, their families would be proud of them through countless generations.

And I’ve heard the dead are happy.

Do you suppose Ashley Wilkes is happy?”

“Why, of course—” she began and then she remembered the look in Ashley’s eyes recently and stopped.

“Is he happy or Hugh Elsing or Dr. Meade?

Any more than my father and your father were happy?”

“Well, perhaps not as happy as they might be, because they’ve all lost their money.”

He laughed.

“It isn’t losing their money, my pet.

I tell you it’s losing their world—the world they were raised in.

They’re like fish out of water or cats with wings.

They were raised to be certain persons, to do certain things, to occupy certain niches.

And those persons and things and niches disappeared forever when General Lee arrived at Appomattox.

Oh, Scarlett, don’t look so stupid!

What is there for Ashley Wilkes to do, now that his home is gone and his plantation taken up for taxes and fine gentlemen are going twenty for a penny?

Can he work with his head or his hands?

I’ll bet you’ve lost money hand over fist since he took over that mill.”

“I have not!”

“How nice.

May I look over your books some Sunday evening when you are at leisure?”

“You can go to the devil and not at your leisure.

You can go now, for all I care.”

“My pet, I’ve been to the devil and he’s a very dull fellow.

I won’t go there again, even for you…. You took my money when you needed it desperately and you used it.

We had an agreement as to how it should be used and you have broken that agreement.

Just remember, my precious little cheat, the time will come when you will want to borrow more money from me.

You’ll want me to bank you, at some incredibly low interest, so you can buy more mills and more mules and build more saloons.

And you can whistle for the money.”

“When I need money I’ll borrow it from the bank, thank you,” she said coldly, but her breast was heaving with rage.

“Will you?

Try to do it.

I own plenty of stock in the bank.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I am interested in some honest enterprises.”

“There are other banks—”

“Plenty of them.

And if I can manage it, you’ll play hell getting a cent from any of them.

You can go to the Carpetbag usurers if you want money.”

“I’ll go to them with pleasure.”

“You’ll go but with little pleasure when you learn their rates of interest.

My pretty, there are penalties in the business world for crooked dealing.

You should have played straight with me.”

“You’re a fine man, aren’t you?

So rich and powerful yet picking on people who are down, like Ashley and me!”

“Don’t put yourself in his class.

You aren’t down.

Nothing will down you.

But he is down and he’ll stay there unless there’s some energetic person behind him, guiding and protecting him as long as he lives.

I’m of no mind to have my money used for the benefit of such a person.”

“You didn’t mind helping me and I was down and—”

“You were a good risk, my dear, an interesting risk.

Why?

Because you didn’t plump yourself down on your male relatives and sob for the old days.

You got out and hustled and now your fortunes are firmly planted on money stolen from a dead man’s wallet and money stolen from the Confederacy.

You’ve got murder to your credit, and husband stealing, attempted fornication, lying and sharp dealing and any amount of chicanery that won’t bear close inspection.

Admirable things, all of them.

They show you to be a person of energy and determination and a good money risk.

It’s entertaining, helping people who help themselves.

I’d lend ten thousand dollars without even a note to that old Roman matron, Mrs. Merriwether.

She started with a basket of pies and look at her now!

A bakery employing half a dozen people, old Grandpa happy with his delivery wagon and that lazy little Creole, René, working hard and liking it….

Or that poor devil, Tommy Wellburn, who does two men’s work with half a man’s body and does it well or—well, I won’t go on and bore you.”

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“You do bore me.

You bore me to distraction,” said Scarlett coldly, hoping to annoy him and divert him from the ever-unfortunate subject of Ashley.

But he only laughed shortly and refused to take up the gauntlet.

“People like them are worth helping.

But Ashley Wilkes—bah!

His breed is of no use or value in an upside-down world like ours.

Whenever the world upends, his kind is the first to perish.

And why not?

They don’t deserve to survive because they won’t fight—don’t know how to fight.

This isn’t the first time the world’s been upside down and it won’t be the last.

It’s happened before and it’ll happen again.

And when it does happen, everyone loses everything and everyone is equal.

And then they all start again at taw, with nothing at all.

That is, nothing except the cunning of their brains and strength of their hands.

But some people, like Ashley, have neither cunning nor strength or, having them, scruple to use them.

And so they go under and they should go under.

It’s a natural law and the world is better off without them.

But there are always a hardy few who come through and, given time, they are right back where they were before the world turned over.”

“You’ve been poor!

You just said that your father turned you out without a penny!” said Scarlett, furious.

“I should think you’d understand and sympathize with Ashley!”

“I do understand,” said Rhett, “but I’m damned if I sympathize.

After the surrender Ashley had much more than I had when I was thrown out.

At least, he had friends who took him in, whereas I was Ishmael.

But what has Ashley done with himself?”

“If you are comparing him with yourself, you conceited thing, why— He’s not like you, thank God!

He wouldn’t soil his hands as you do, making money with Carpetbaggers and Scallawags and Yankees.

He’s scrupulous and honorable!”

“But not too scrupulous and honorable to take aid and money from a woman.”

“What else could he have done?”

“Who am I to say?

I only know what I did, both when I was thrown out and nowadays.

I only know what other men have done.

We saw opportunity, some honestly, some shadily, and we are still making the most of it.

But the Ashleys of this world have the same chances and don’t take them.

They just aren’t smart, Scarlett, and only the smart deserve to survive.”

She hardly heard what he was saying, for now there was coming back to her the exact memory which had teased her a few minutes before when he first began speaking.

She remembered the cold wind that swept the orchard of Tara and Ashley standing by a pile of rails, his eyes looking beyond her.

And he said—what?

Some funny foreign word that sounded like profanity and had talked of the end of the world.

She had not known what he meant then but now bewildered comprehension was coming to her and with it a sick, weary feeling.

“Why, Ashley said—”

“Yes?”

“Once at Tara he said something about the—a—dusk of the gods and about the end of the world and some such foolishness.”

“Ah, the Götterdämmerung!”

Rhett’s eyes were sharp with interest.

“And what else?”

“Oh, I don’t remember exactly.

I wasn’t paying much mind.

But—yes— something about the strong coming through and the weak being winnowed out.”

“Ah, so he knows.

Then that makes it harder for him.

Most of them don’t know and will never know.

They’ll wonder all their lives where the lost enchantment has vanished.

They’ll simply suffer in proud and incompetent silence.

But he understands.

He knows he’s winnowed out.”

“Oh, he isn’t!

Not while I’ve got breath in my body.”

He looked at her quietly and his brown face was smooth.

“Scarlett, how did you manage to get his consent to come to Atlanta and take over the mill?

Did he struggle very hard against you?”

She had a quick memory of the scene of Ashley after Gerald’s funeral and put it from her.

“Why, of course not,” she replied indignantly.

“When I explained to him that I needed his help because I didn’t trust that scamp who was running the mill and Frank was too busy to help me and I was going to—well, there was Ella Lorena, you see.

He was very glad to help me out.”

“Sweet are the uses of motherhood!

So that’s how you got around him.

Well, you’ve got him where you want him now, poor devil, as shackled to you by obligations as any of your convicts are by their chains.

And I wish you both joy.

But, as I said at the beginning of this discussion, you’ll never get another cent out of me for any of your little unladylike schemes, my double-dealing lady.”

She was smarting with anger and with disappointment as well.

For some time she had been planning to borrow more money from Rhett to buy a lot downtown and start a lumber yard there.

“I can do without your money,” she cried.

“I’m making money out of Johnnie Gallegher’s mill, plenty of it, now that I don’t use free darkies and I have some money out on mortgages and we are coining cash at the store from the darky trade.”

“Yes, so I heard.

How clever of you to rook the helpless and the widow and the orphan and the ignorant!

But if you must steal, Scarlett, why not steal from the rich and strong instead of the poor and weak?

From Robin Hood on down to now, that’s been considered highly moral.”

“Because,” said Scarlett shortly, “it’s a sight easier and safer to steal—as you call it—from the poor.”

He laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.

“You’re a fine honest rogue, Scarlett!”

A rogue!

Queer that that term should hurt.

She wasn’t a rogue, she told herself vehemently.

At least, that wasn’t what she wanted to be.

She wanted to be a great lady.

For a moment her mind went swiftly down the years and she saw her mother, moving with a sweet swish of skirts and a faint fragrance of sachet, her small busy hands tireless in the service of others, loved, respected, cherished.

And suddenly her heart was sick.

“If you are trying to devil me,” she said tiredly, “it’s no use.

I know I’m not as—scrupulous as I should be these days.

Not as kind and as pleasant as I was brought up to be.

But I can’t help it, Rhett.

Truly, I can’t.

What else could I have done?

What would have happened to me, to Wade, to Tara and all of us if I’d been—gentle when that Yankee came to Tara?

I should have been—but I don’t even want to think of that.

And when Jonas Wilkerson was going to take the home place, suppose I’d been—kind and scrupulous?

Where would we all be now?

And if I’d been sweet and simple minded and not nagged Frank about bad debts we’d—oh, well.

Maybe I am a rogue, but I won’t be a rogue forever, Rhett.

But during these past years— and even now—what else could I have done?

How else could I have acted?

I’ve felt that I was trying to row a heavily loaded boat in a storm.

I’ve had so much trouble just trying to keep afloat that I couldn’t be bothered about things that didn’t matter, things I could part with easily and not miss, like good manners and—well, things like that.

I’ve been too afraid my boat would be swamped and so I’ve dumped overboard the things that seemed least important.”

“Pride and honor and truth and virtue and kindliness,” he enumerated silkily.

“You are right, Scarlett.

They aren’t important when a boat is sinking.

But look around you at your friends.

Either they are bringing their boats ashore safely with cargoes intact or they are content to go down with all flags flying.”

“They are a passel of fools,” she said shortly.

“There’s a time for all things.

When I’ve got plenty of money, I’ll be nice as you please, too.

Butter won’t melt in my mouth.

I can afford to be then.”

“You can afford to be—but you won’t.

It’s hard to salvage jettisoned cargo and, if it is retrieved, it’s usually irreparably damaged.

And I fear that when you can afford to fish up the honor and virtue and kindness you’ve thrown overboard, you’ll find they have suffered a sea change and not, I fear, into something rich and strange…. ”

He rose suddenly and picked up his hat.

“You are going?”

“Yes.

Aren’t you relieved?

I leave you to what remains of your conscience.”

He paused and looked down at the baby, putting out a finger for the child to grip.

“I suppose Frank is bursting with pride?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Has a lot of plans for this baby, I suppose?”

“Oh, well, you know how silly men are about their babies.”

“Then, tell him,” said Rhett and stopped short, an odd look on his face, “tell him if he wants to see his plans for his child work out, he’d better stay home at night more often than he’s doing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I say.

Tell him to stay home.”

“Oh, you vile creature!

To insinuate that poor Frank would—”

“Oh, good Lord!” Rhett broke into a roar of laughter.

“I didn’t mean he was running around with women!

Frank!

Oh, good Lord!”

He went down the steps still laughing.

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐋𝐈𝐕.

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THE MARCH AFTERNOON was windy and cold, and Scarlett pulled the lap robe high under her arms as she drove out the Decatur road toward Johnnie Gallegher’s mill.

Driving alone was hazardous these days and she knew it, more hazardous than ever before, for now the negroes were completely out of hand.

As Ashley had prophesied, there had been hell to pay since the legislature refused to ratify the amendment.

The stout refusal had been like a slap in the face of the furious North and retaliation had come swiftly.

The North was determined to force the negro vote on the state and, to this end, Georgia had been declared in rebellion and put under the strictest martial law.

Georgia’s very existence as a state had been wiped out and it had become, with Florida and Alabama, “Military District Number Three,” under the command of a Federal general.

If life had been insecure and frightening before this, it was doubly so now.

The military regulations which had seemed so stringent the year before were now mild by comparison with the ones issued by General Pope.

Confronted with the prospect of negro rule, the future seemed dark and hopeless, and the embittered state smarted and writhed helplessly.

As for the negroes, their new importance went to their heads, and, realizing that they had the Yankee Army behind them, their outrages increased.

No one was safe from them.

In this wild and fearful time, Scarlett was frightened—frightened but determined, and she still made her rounds alone, with Frank’s pistol tucked in the upholstery of the buggy.

She silently cursed the legislature for bringing this worse disaster upon them all.

What good had it done, this fine brave stand, this gesture which everyone called gallant?

It had just made matters so much worse.

As she drew near the path that led down through the bare trees into the creek bottom where the Shantytown settlement was, she clucked to the horse to quicken his speed.

She always felt uneasy driving past this dirty, sordid cluster of discarded army tents and slab cabins.

It had the worst reputation of any spot in or near Atlanta, for here lived in filth outcast negroes, black prostitutes and a scattering of poor whites of the lowest order.

It was rumored to be the refuge of negro and white criminals and was the first place the Yankee soldiers searched when they wanted a man.

Shootings and cuttings went on here with such regularity that the authorities seldom troubled to investigate and generally left the Shantytowners to settle their own dark affairs.

Back in the woods there was a still that manufactured a cheap quality of corn whisky and, by night, the cabins in the creek bottoms resounded with drunken yells and curses.

Even the Yankees admitted that it was a plague spot and should be wiped out, but they took no steps in this direction.

Indignation was loud among the inhabitants of Atlanta and Decatur who were forced to use the road for travel between the two towns.

Men went by Shantytown with their pistols loosened in their holsters and nice women never willingly passed it, even under the protection of their men, for usually there were drunken negro slatterns sitting along the road, hurling insults and shouting coarse words.

As long as she had Archie beside her, Scarlett had not given Shantytown a thought, because not even the most impudent negro woman dared laugh in her presence.

But since she had been forced to drive alone, there had been any number of annoying, maddening incidents.

The negro sluts seemed to try themselves whenever she drove by.

There was nothing she could do except ignore them and boil with rage.

She could not even take comfort in airing her troubles to her neighbors or family because the neighbors would say triumphantly: “Well, what else did you expect?”

And her family would take on dreadfully again and try to stop her.

And she had no intention of stopping her trips.

Thank Heaven, there were no ragged women along the roadside today!

As she passed the trail leading down to the settlement she looked with distaste at the group of shacks squatting in the hollow in the dreary slant of the afternoon sun.

There was a chill wind blowing, and as she passed there came to her nose the mingled smells of wood smoke, frying pork and untended privies.

Averting her nose, she flapped the reins smartly across the horse’s back and hurried him past and around the bend of the road.

Just as she was beginning to draw a breath of relief, her heart rose in her throat with sudden fright, for a huge negro slipped silently from behind a large oak tree.

She was frightened but not enough to lose her wits and, in an instant, the horse was pulled up and she had Frank’s pistol in her hand.

“What do you want?” she cried with all the sternness she could muster.

The big negro ducked back behind the oak, and the voice that answered was frightened.

“Lawd, Miss Scarlett, doan shoot Big Sam!”

Big Sam!

For a moment she could not take in his words.

Big Sam, the foreman of Tara whom she had seen last in the days of the siege.

What on earth…

“Come out of there and let me see if you are really Sam!”

Reluctantly he slid out of his hiding place, a giant ragged figure, barefooted, clad in denim breeches and a blue Union uniform jacket that was far too short and tight for his big frame.

When she saw it was really Big Sam, she shoved the pistol down into the upholstery and smiled with pleasure.

“Oh, Sam!

How nice to see you!”

Sam galloped over to the buggy, his eyes rolling with joy and his white teeth flashing, and clutched her outstretched hand with two black hands as big as hams.

His watermelon-pink tongue lapped out, his whole body wiggled and his joyful contortions were as ludicrous as the gambolings of a mastiff.

“Mah Lawd, it sho is good ter see some of de fambly agin!” he cried, scrunching her hand until she felt that the bones would crack.

“Huccome you got so mean lak, totin’ a gun, Miss Scarlett?”

“So many mean folks these days, Sam, that I have to tote it.

What on earth are you doing in a nasty place like Shantytown, you, a respectable darky?

And why haven’t you been into town to see me?”

“Law’m, Miss Scarlett, Ah doan lib in Shantytown.

Ah jes’ bidin’ hyah fer a spell.

Ah wouldn’ lib in dat place fer nuthin’.

Ah nebber in mah life seed sech trashy niggers.

An’ Ah din’ know you wuz in ’Lanta.

Ah thought you wuz at Tara.

Ah wuz aimin’ ter come home ter Tara soon as Ah got de chance.”

“Have you been living in Atlanta ever since the siege?”

“No, Ma’m!

Ah been trabelin’!”

He released her hand and she painfully flexed it to see if the bones were intact.

“’Member w’en you seed me las’?”

Scarlett remembered the hot day before the siege began when she and Rhett had sat in the carriage and the gang of negroes with Big Sam at their head had marched down the dusty street toward the entrenchments singing “Go Down, Moses.”

She nodded.

“Well, Ah wuked lak a dawg diggin’ bresswuks an’ fillin’ san’ bags, tell de Confedruts lef’ ’Lanta.

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De cap’n gempmum whut had me in charge, he wuz kilt an’ dar warn’t nobody ter tell Big Sam whut ter do, so Ah jes’ lay low in de bushes.

Ah thought Ah’d try ter git home ter Tara, but den Ah hear dat all de country roun’ Tara done buhnt up.

’Sides, Ah din’ hab no way ter git back an’ Ah wuz sceered de patterollers pick me up, kase Ah din’ hab no pass.

Den de Yankees come in an’ a Yankee gempmum, he wuz a cunnel, he tek a shine ter me an’ he keep me ter ten’ ter his hawse an’ his boots.

“Yas, Ma’m!

Ah sho did feel biggity, bein’ a body serbant lak Poke, w’en Ah ain’ nuthin’ but a fe’el han’.

Ah ain’ tell de Cunnel Ah wuz a fe’el han’ an’ he— Well, Miss Scarlett, Yankees is iggerunt folks!

He din’ know de diffunce!

So Ah stayed wid him an’ Ah went ter Sabannah wid him w’en Gin’ul Sherman went dar, an’ fo’ Gawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah nebber seed sech awful goin’-ons as Ah seed on de way ter Sabannah!

A-stealin’ an’ a-buhnin’—did dey buhn Tara, Miss Scarlett?”

“They set fire to it, but we put it out.”

“Well’m, Ah sho glad ter hear dat.

Tara mah home an’ Ah is aimin’ ter go back dar.

An’ w’en de wah ober, de Cunnel he say ter me: ‘You Sam!

You come on back Nawth wid me.

Ah pay you good wages.’

Well’m, lak all de niggers, Ah wuz honin’ ter try disyere freedom fo’ Ah went home, so Ah goes Nawth wid de Cunnel.

Yas’m, us went ter Washin’ton an’ Noo Yawk an’ den ter Bawston whar de Cunnel lib.

Yas, Ma’m, Ah’s a trabeled nigger!

Miss Scarlett, dar’s mo hawses and cah’iges on dem Yankee streets dan you kin shake a stick at!

Ah wuz sceered all de time Ah wuz gwine git runned ober!”

“Did you like it up North, Sam?”

Sam scratched his woolly head.

“Ah did—an’ Ah din’t.

De Cunnel, he a mighty fine man an’ he unnerstan’ niggers.

But his wife, she sumpin’ else.

His wife, she call me ‘Mister’ fust time she seed me.

Yas’m, she do dat an’ Ah lak ter drap in mah tracks w’en she do it.

De Cunnel, he tell her ter call me ‘Sam’ an’ den she do it.

But all dem Yankee folks, fust time dey meet me, dey call me ‘Mist’ O’Hara.’

An’ dey ast me ter set down wid dem, lak Ah wuz jes’ as good as dey wuz.

Well, Ah ain’ nebber set down wid w’ite folks an’ Ah is too ole ter learn.

Dey treat me lak Ah jes’ as good as dey wuz, Miss Scarlett, but in dere hearts, dey din’ lak me—dey din’ lak no niggers.

An’ dey wuz sceered of me, kase Ah’s so big.

An’ dey wuz allus astin’ me ’bout de blood houn’s dat chase me an’ de beatins Ah got.

An’, Lawd, Miss Scarlett, Ah ain’ nebber got no beatin’s!

You know Mist’ Gerald ain’ gwine let nobody beat a ’spensive nigger lak me!

“W’en Ah tell dem dat an’ tell dem how good Miss Ellen ter de niggers, an’ how she set up a whole week wid me w’en Ah had de pneumony, dey doan b’lieve me.

An’, Miss Scarlett, Ah got ter honin’ fer Miss Ellen an’ Tara, tell it look lak Ah kain stan’ it no longer, an’ one night Ah lit out fer home, an’ Ah rid de freight cahs all de way down ter ’Lanta.

Ef you buy me a ticket ter Tara, Ah sho be glad ter git home.

Ah sho be glad ter see Miss Ellen and Mist’ Gerald agin.

Ah done had nuff freedom.

Ah wants somebody ter feed me good vittles reg’lar, and tell me whut ter do an’ whut not ter do, an’ look affer me w’en Ah gits sick.

S’pose Ah gits de pneumony agin?

Is dat Yankee lady gwine tek keer of me?

No, Ma’m!

She gwine call me ‘Mist’ O’Hara’ but she ain’ gwine nuss me.

But Miss Ellen, she gwine nuss me, do Ah git sick an’—whut’s de mattuh, Miss Scarlett?”

“Pa and Mother are both dead, Sam.”

“Daid?

Is you funnin’ wid me, Miss Scarlett?

Dat ain’ no way ter treat me!”

“I’m not funning.

It’s true.

Mother died when Sherman’s men came through Tara and Pa—he went last June.

Oh, Sam, don’t cry.

Please don’t!

If you do, I’ll cry too.

Sam, don’t!

I just can’t stand it.

Let’s don’t talk about it now.

I’ll tell you all about it some other time….

Miss Suellen is at Tara and she’s married to a mighty fine man, Mr. Will Benteen.

And Miss Carreen, she’s in a—”

Scarlett paused.

She could never make plain to the weeping giant what a convent was.

“She’s living in Charleston now.

But Pork and Prissy are at Tara….

There, Sam, wipe your nose.

Do you really want to go home?”

“Yas’m, but it ain’ gwine be lak Ah thought wid Miss Ellen an’—”

“Sam, how’d you like to stay here in Atlanta and work for me?

I need a driver and I need one bad with so many mean folks around these days.”

“Yas’m.

You sho do.

Ah been aimin’ ter say you ain’ got no bizness drivin’ ’round by yo’seff, Miss Scarlett.

You ain’ got no notion how mean some niggers is dese days, specially dem whut live hyah in Shantytown.

It ain’ safe fer you.

Ah ain’ been in Shantytown but two days, but Ah hear dem talk ’bout you.

An’ yestiddy w’en you druv by an’ dem trashy black wenches holler at you, Ah recernize you but you went by so fas’ Ah couldn’ ketch you.

But Ah sho tan de hides of dem niggers!

Ah sho did.

Ain’ you notice dar ain’ none of dem roun’ hyah terday?”

“I did notice and I certainly thank you, Sam.

Well, how would you like to be my carriage man?”

“Miss Scarlett, thankee, Ma’m, but Ah specs Ah better go ter Tara.”

Big Sam looked down and his bare toe traced aimless marks in the road.

There was a furtive uneasiness about him.

“Now, why?

I’ll pay you good wages.

You must stay with me.”

The big black face, stupid and as easily read as a child’s, looked up at her and there was fear in it.

He came closer and, leaning over the side of the buggy, whispered: “Miss Scarlett, Ah got ter git outer ’Lanta.

Ah got ter git ter Tara whar dey woan fine me.

Ah—Ah done kilt a man.”

“A darky?”

“No’m.

A w’ite man.

A Yankee sojer and dey’s lookin’ fer me.

Dat de reason Ah’m hyah at Shantytown.”

“How did it happen?”

“He wuz drunk an’ he said sumpin’ Ah couldn’ tek noways an’ Ah got mah han’s on his neck—an’ Ah din’ mean ter kill him, Miss Scarlett, but mah han’s is pow’ful strong, an’ fo Ah knowed it, he wuz kilt.

An’ Ah wuz so sceered Ah din’ know whut ter do!

So Ah come out hyah ter hide an’ w’en Ah seed you go by yestiddy, Ah says ‘Bress Gawd! Dar Miss Scarlett!

She tek keer of me.

She ain’ gwine let de Yankees git me.

She sen’ me back ter Tara.’”

“You say they’re after you?

They know you did it?”

“Yas’m, Ah’s so big ain’ no mistakin’ me.

Ah spec Ah’s de bigges’ nigger in ’Lanta.

Dey done been out hyah already affer me las’ night but a nigger gal, she hid me in a cabe ober in de woods, tell dey wuz gone.”

Scarlett sat frowning for a moment.

She was not in the least alarmed or distressed that Sam had committed murder, but she was disappointed that she could not have him as a driver.

A big negro like Sam would be as good a bodyguard as Archie.

Well, she must get him safe to Tara somehow, for of course the authorities must not get him.

He was too valuable a darky to be hanged.

Why, he was the best foreman Tara had ever had!

It did not enter Scarlett’s mind that he was free.

He still belonged to her, like Pork and Mammy and Peter and Cookie and Prissy.

He was still “one of our family” and, as such, must be protected.

“I’ll send you to Tara tonight,” she said finally.

“Now Sam, I’ve got to drive out the road a piece, but I ought to be back here before sundown.

You be waiting here for me when I come back.

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Don’t tell anyone where you are going and if you’ve got a hat, bring it along to hide your face.”

“Ah ain’ got no hat.”

“Well, here’s a quarter.

You buy a hat from one of those shanty darkies and meet me here.”

“Yas’m.”

His face glowed with relief at once more having someone to tell him what to do.

Scarlett drove on thoughtfully.

Will would certainly welcome a good field hand at Tara.

Pork had never been any good in the fields and never would be any good.

With Sam on the place, Pork could come to Atlanta and join Dilcey as she had promised him when Gerald died.

When she reached the mill the sun was setting and it was later than she cared to be out.

Johnnie Gallegher was standing in the doorway of the miserable shack that served as cook room for the little lumber camp.

Sitting on a log in front of the slab-sided shack that was their sleeping quarters were four of the five convicts Scarlett had apportioned to Johnnie’s mill.

Their convict uniforms were dirty and foul with sweat, shackles clanked between their ankles when they moved tiredly, and there was an air of apathy and despair about them.

They were a thin, unwholesome lot, Scarlett thought, peering sharply at them, and when she had leased them, so short a time before, they were an upstanding crew.

They did not even raise their eyes as she dismounted from the buggy but Johnnie turned toward her, carelessly dragging off his hat.

His little brown face was as hard as a nut as he greeted her.

“I don’t like the look of the men,” she said abruptly.

“They don’t look well.

Where’s the other one?”

“Says he’s sick,” said Johnnie laconically.

“He’s in the bunk house.”

“What ails him?”

“Laziness, mostly.”

“I’ll go see him.”

“Don’t do that.

He’s probably nekkid.

I’ll tend to him.

He’ll be back at work tomorrow.”

Scarlett hesitated and saw one of the convicts raise a weary head and give Johnnie a stare of intense hatred before he looked at the ground again.

“Have you been whipping these men?”

“Now, Mrs. Kennedy, begging your pardon, who’s running this mill?

You put me in charge and told me to run it.

You said I’d have a free hand.

You ain’t got no complaints to make of me, have you?

Ain’t I making twice as much for you as Mr. Elsing did?”

“Yes, you are,” said Scarlett, but a shiver went over her, like a goose walking across her grave.

There was something sinister about this camp with its ugly shacks, something which had not been here when Hugh Elsing had it.

There was a loneliness, an isolation, about it that chilled her.

These convicts were so far away from everything, so completely at the mercy of Johnnie Gallegher, and if he chose to whip them or otherwise mistreat them, she would probably never know about it.

The convicts would be afraid to complain to her for fear of worse punishment after she was gone.

“The men look thin.

Are you giving them enough to eat?

God knows, I spend enough money on their food to make them fat as hogs.

The flour and pork alone cost thirty dollars last month.

What are you giving them for supper?”

She stepped over to the cook shack and looked in.

A fat mulatto woman, who was leaning over a rusty old stove, dropped a half curtsy as she saw Scarlett and went on stirring a pot in which black-eyed peas were cooking.

Scarlett knew that Johnnie Gallegher lived with her but thought it best to ignore the fact.

She saw that except for the peas and a pan of corn pone there was no other food being prepared.

“Haven’t you got anything else for these men?”

“No’m.”

“Haven’t you got any side meat in these peas?”

“No’m.”

“No boiling bacon in the peas?

But black-eyed peas are no good without bacon.

There’s no strength to them.

Why isn’t there any bacon?”

“Mist’ Johnnie, he say dar ain’ no use puttin’ in no side meat.”

“You’ll put bacon in.

Where do you keep your supplies?”

The negro woman rolled frightened eyes toward the small closet that served as a pantry and Scarlett threw the door open.

There was an open barrel of cornmeal on the floor, a small sack of flour, a pound of coffee, a little sugar, a gallon jug of sorghum and two hams.

One of the hams sitting on the shelf had been recently cooked and only one or two slices had been cut from it.

Scarlett turned in a fury on Johnnie Gallegher and met his coldly angry gaze.

“Where are the five sacks of white flour I sent out last week?

And the sugar sack and the coffee?

And I had five hams sent and ten pounds of side meat and God knows how many bushels of yams and Irish potatoes.

Well, where are they?

You can’t have used them all in a week if you fed the men five meals a day.

You’ve sold them!

That’s what you’ve done, you thief! Sold my good supplies and put the money in your pocket and fed these men on dried peas and corn pone.

No wonder they look so thin.

Get out of the way.”

She stormed past him to the doorway.

“You, man, there on the end—yes, you!

Come here!”

The man rose and walked awkwardly toward her, his shackles clanking, and she saw that his bare ankles were red and raw from the chafing of the iron.

“When did you last have ham?”

The man looked down at the ground.

“Speak up!”

Still the man stood silent and abject.

Finally he raised his eyes, looked Scarlett in the face imploringly and dropped his gaze again.

“Scared to talk, eh?

Well, go in that pantry and get that ham off the shelf.

Rebecca, give him your knife.

Take it out to those men and divide it up.

Rebecca, make some biscuits and coffee for the men.

And serve plenty of sorghum.

Start now, so I can see you do it.”

“Dat’s Mist’ Johnnie’s privut flour an’ coffee,” Rebecca muttered frightenedly.

“Mr. Johnnie’s my foot!

I suppose it’s his private ham too.

You do what I say.

Get busy.

Johnnie Gallegher, come out to the buggy with me.”

She stalked across the littered yard and climbed into the buggy, noticing with grim satisfaction that the men were tearing at the ham and cramming bits into their mouths voraciously.

They looked as if they feared it would be taken from them at any minute.

“You are a rare scoundrel!” she cried furiously to Johnnie as he stood at the wheel, his hat pushed back from his lowering brow.

“And you can just hand over to me the price of my supplies.

In the future, I’ll bring you provisions every day instead of ordering them by the month.

Then you can’t cheat me.”

“In the future I won’t be here,” said Johnnie Gallegher.

“You mean you are quitting!”

For a moment it was on Scarlett’s hot tongue to cry: “Go and good riddance!” but the cool hand of caution stopped her.

If Johnnie should quit, what would she do?

He had been doubling the amount of lumber Hugh turned out.

And just now she had a big order, the biggest she had ever had and a rush order at that.

She had to get that lumber into Atlanta.

If Johnnie quit, whom would she get to take over the mill?

“Yes, I’m quitting.

You put me in complete charge here and told me that all you expected of me was as much lumber as I could possibly get out.

You didn’t tell me how to run my business then and I’m not aiming to have you start now.

How I get the lumber out is no affair of yours.

You can’t complain that I’ve fallen down on my bargain.

I’ve made money for you and I’ve earned my salary—and what I could pick up on the side, too.

And here you come out here, interfering, asking questions and breaking my authority in front of the men.

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How can you expect me to keep discipline after this?

What if the men do get an occasional lick?

The lazy scum deserve worse.

What if they ain’t fed up and pampered?

They don’t deserve nothing better.

Either you tend to your business and let me tend to mine or I quit tonight.”

His hard little face looked flintier than ever and Scarlett was in a quandary.

If he quit tonight, what would she do?

She couldn’t stay here all night guarding the convicts!

Something of her dilemma showed in her eyes for Johnnie’s expression changed subtly and some of the hardness went out of his face.

There was an easy agreeable note in his voice when he spoke.

“It’s getting late, Mrs. Kennedy, and you’d better be getting on home.

We ain’t going to fall out over a little thing like this, are we?

S’pose you take ten dollars out of my next month’s wages and let’s call it square.”

Scarlett’s eyes went unwillingly to the miserable group gnawing on the ham and she thought of the sick man lying in the windy shack.

She ought to get rid of Johnnie Gallegher.

He was a thief and a brutal man.

There was no telling what he did to the convicts when she wasn’t there.

But, on the other hand, he was smart and, God knows, she needed a smart man.

Well, she couldn’t part with him now.

He was making money for her.

She’d just have to see to it that the convicts got their proper rations in the future.

“I’ll take twenty dollars out of your wages,” she said shortly, “and I’ll be back and discuss the matter further in the morning.”

She picked up the reins.

But she knew there would be no further discussion.

She knew the matter had ended there and she knew Johnnie knew it.

As she drove off down the path to the Decatur road her conscience battled with her desire for money.

She knew she had no business exposing human lives to the hard little man’s mercies.

If he should cause the death of one of them she would be as guilty as he was, for she had kept him in charge after learning of his brutalities.

But, on the other hand—well, on the other hand, men had no business getting to be convicts.

If they broke laws and got caught, then they deserved what they got.

This partly salved her conscience but as she drove down the road the dull thin faces of the convicts would keep coming back into her mind.

“Oh, I’ll think of them later,” she decided, and pushed the thought into the lumber room of her mind and shut the door upon it.

*********

The sun had completely gone when she reached the bend in the road above Shantytown and the woods about her were dark.

With the disappearance of the sun, a bitter chill had fallen on the twilight world and a cold wind blew through the dark woods, making the bare boughs crack and the dead leaves rustle.

She had never been out this late by herself and she was uneasy and wished herself home.

Big Sam was nowhere to be seen and, as she drew rein to wait for him, she worried about his absence, fearing the Yankees might have already picked him up.

Then she heard footsteps coming up the path from the settlement and a sigh of relief went through her lips.

She’d certainly dress Sam down for keeping her waiting.

But it wasn’t Sam who came round the bend.

It was a ragged white man and a squat black negro with shoulders and chest like a gorilla.

Swiftly she flapped the reins on the horse’s back and clutched the pistol.

The horse started to trot and suddenly shied as the white man threw up his hand.

“Lady,” he said, “can you give me a quarter?

I’m sure hungry.”

“Get out of the way,” she answered, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

“I haven’t got any money.

Giddap.”

With a sudden swift movement the man’s hand was on the horse’s bridle.

“Grab her!” he shouted to the negro.

“She’s probably got her money in her bosom!”

What happened next was like a nightmare to Scarlett, and it all happened so quickly.

She brought up her pistol swiftly and some instinct told her not to fire at the white man for fear of shooting the horse.

As the negro came running to the buggy, his black face twisted in a leering grin, she fired point-blank at him.

Whether or not she hit him, she never knew, but the next minute the pistol was wrenched from her hand by a grasp that almost broke her wrist.

The negro was beside her, so close that she could smell the rank odor of him as he tried to drag her over the buggy side.

With her one free hand she fought madly, clawing at his face, and then she felt his big hand at her throat and, with a ripping noise, her basque was torn open from neck to waist.

Then the black hand fumbled between her breasts, and terror and revulsion such as she had never known came over her and she screamed like an insane woman.

“Shut her up!

Drag her out!” cried the white man, and the black hand fumbled across Scarlett’s face to her mouth.

She bit as savagely as she could and then screamed again, and through her screaming she heard the white man swear and realized that there was a third man in the dark road.

The black hand dropped from her mouth and the negro leaped away as Big Sam charged at him.

“Run, Miss Scarlett!” yelled Sam, grappling with the negro; and Scarlett, shaking and screaming, clutched up the reins and whip and laid them both over the horse.

It went off at a jump and she felt the wheels pass over something soft, something resistant.

It was the white man who lay in the road where Sam had knocked him down.

Maddened by terror, she lashed the horse again and again and it struck a gait that made the buggy rock and sway.

Through her terror she was conscious of the sound of feet running behind her and she screamed at the horse to go faster.

If that black ape got her again, she would die before he even got his hands upon her.

A voice yelled behind her: “Miss Scarlett!

Stop!”

Without slacking, she looked trembling over her shoulder and saw Big Sam racing down the road behind her, his long legs working like hard-driven pistons.

She drew rein as he came up and he flung himself into the buggy, his big body crowding her to one side.

Sweat and blood were streaming down his face as he panted: “Is you hu’t?

Did dey hu’t you?”

She could not speak, but seeing the direction of his eyes and their quick averting, she realized that her basque was open to the waist and her bare bosom and corset cover were showing.

With a shaking hand she clutched the two edges together and bowing her head began to cry in terrified sobs.

“Gimme dem lines,” said Sam, snatching the reins from her.

“Hawse, mek tracks!”

The whip cracked and the startled horse went off at a wild gallop that threatened to throw the buggy into the ditch.

“Ah hope Ah done kill dat black baboon.

But Ah din’ wait ter fine out,” he panted. “But ef he hahmed you, Miss Scarlett, Ah’ll go back an’ mek sho of it.”

“No—no—drive on quickly,” she sobbed.

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𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐗𝐋𝐕.

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THAT NIGHT WHEN FRANK DEPOSITED HER and Aunt Pitty and the children at Melanie’s and rode off down the street with Ashley, Scarlett could have burst with rage and hurt.

How could he go off to a political meeting on this of all nights in the world?

A political meeting!

And on the same night when she had been attacked, when anything might have happened to her!

It was unfeeling and selfish of him.

But then, he had taken the whole affair with maddening calm, ever since Sam had carried her sobbing into the house, her basque gaping to the waist.

He hadn’t clawed his beard even once when she cried out her story.

He had just questioned gently: “Sugar, are you hurt—or just scared?”

Wrath mingling with her tears she had been unable to answer and Sam had volunteered that she was just scared.

“Ah got dar fo’ dey done mo’n t’ar her dress.”

“You’re a good boy, Sam, and I won’t forget what you’ve done.

If there’s anything I can do for you—”

“Yassah, you kin sen’ me ter Tara, quick as you kin.

De Yankees is affer me.”

Frank had listened to this statement calmly too, and had asked no questions.

He looked very much as he did the night Tony came beating on their door, as though this was an exclusively masculine affair and one to be handled with a minimum of words and emotions.

“You go get in the buggy.

I’ll have Peter drive you as far as Rough and Ready tonight and you can hide in the woods till morning and then catch the train to Jonesboro.

It’ll be safer….

Now, Sugar, stop crying.

It’s all over now and you aren’t really hurt.

Miss Pitty, could I have your smelling salts?

And Mammy, fetch Miss Scarlett a glass of wine.”

Scarlett had burst into renewed tears, this time tears of rage.

She wanted comforting, indignation, threats of vengeance.

She would even have preferred him storming at her, saying that this was just what he had warned her would happen—anything rather than have him take it all so casually and treat her danger as a matter of small moment.

He was nice and gentle, of course, but in an absent way as if he had something far more important on his mind.

And that important thing had turned out to be a small political meeting!

She could hardly believe her ears when he told her to change her dress and get ready for him to escort her over to Melanie’s for the evening.

He must know how harrowing her experience had been, must know she did not want to spend an evening at Melanie’s when her tired body and jangled nerves cried out for the warm relaxation of bed and blankets—with a hot brick to make her toes tingle and a hot toddy to soothe her fears.

If he really loved her, nothing could have forced him from her side on this of all nights.

He would have stayed home and held her hand and told her over and over that he would have died if anything had happened to her.

And when he came home tonight and she had him alone, she would certainly tell him so.

Melanie’s small parlor looked as serene as it usually did on nights when Frank and Ashley were away and the women gathered together to sew.

The room was warm and cheerful in the firelight.

The lamp on the table shed a quiet yellow glow on the four smooth heads bent to their needlework.

Four skirts billowed modestly, eight small feet were daintily placed on low hassocks.

The quiet breathing of Wade, Ella and Beau came through the open door of the nursery.

Archie sat on a stool by the hearth, his back against the fireplace, his cheek distended with tobacco, whittling industriously on a bit of wood.

The contrast between the dirty, hairy old man and the four neat, fastidious ladies was as great as though he were a grizzled, vicious old watchdog and they four small kittens.

Melanie’s soft voice, tinged with indignation, went on and on as she told of the recent outburst of temperament on the part of the Lady Harpists.

Unable to agree with the Gentlemen’s Glee Club as to the program for their next recital, the ladies had waited on Melanie that afternoon and announced their intention of withdrawing completely from the Musical Circle.

It had taken all of Melanie’s diplomacy to persuade them to defer their decision.

Scarlett, overwrought, could have screamed: “Oh, damn the Lady Harpists!”

She wanted to talk about her dreadful experience.

She was bursting to relate it in detail, so she could ease her own fright by frightening the others.

She wanted to tell how brave she had been, just to assure herself by the sound of her own words that she had, indeed, been brave.

But every time she brought up the subject, Melanie deftly steered the conversation into other and innocuous channels.

This irritated Scarlett almost beyond endurance.

They were as mean as Frank.

How could they be so calm and placid when she had just escaped so terrible a fate?

They weren’t even displaying common courtesy in denying her the relief of talking about it.

The events of the afternoon had shaken her more than she cared to admit, even to herself.

Every time she thought of that malignant black face peering at her from the shadows of the twilight forest road, she fell to trembling.

When she thought of the black hand at her bosom and what would have happened if Big Sam had not appeared, she bent her head lower and squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

The longer she sat silent in the peaceful room, trying to sew, listening to Melanie’s voice, the tighter her nerves stretched.

She felt that at any moment she would actually hear them break with the same pinging sound a banjo string makes when it snaps.

Archie’s whittling annoyed her and she frowned at him.

Suddenly it seemed odd that he should be sitting there occupying himself with a piece of wood.

Usually he lay flat on the sofa, during the evenings when he was on guard, and slept and snored so violently that his long beard leaped into the air with each rumbling breath.

It was odder still that neither Melanie nor India hinted to him that he should spread a paper on the floor to catch his litter of shavings.

He had already made a perfect mess on the hearth rug but they did not seem to have noticed it.

While she watched him, Archie turned suddenly toward the fire and spat a stream of tobacco juice on it with such vehemence that India, Melanie and Pitty leaped as though a bomb had exploded.

“Need you expectorate so loudly?” cried India in a voice that cracked with nervous annoyance.

Scarlett looked at her in surprise for India was always so self-contained.

Archie gave her look for look.

“I reckon I do,” he answered coldly and spat again.

Melanie gave a little frowning glance at India.

“I was always so glad dear Papa didn’t chew,” began Pitty, and Melanie, her frown creasing deeper, swung on her and spoke sharper words than Scarlett had ever heard her speak.

“Oh, do hush, Auntie! You’re so tactless.”

“Oh, dear!”

Pitty dropped her sewing in her lap and her mouth pursed up in hurt.

“I declare, I don’t know what ails you all tonight.

You and India are just as jumpy and cross as two old sticks.”

No one answered her.

Melanie did not even apologize for her crossness but went back to her sewing with small violence.

“You’re taking stitches an inch long,” declared Pitty with some satisfaction.

“You’ll have to take every one of them out.

What’s the matter with you?”

But Melanie still did not answer.

Was there anything the matter with them, Scarlett wondered?

Had she been too absorbed with her own fears to notice?

Yes, despite Melanie’s attempts to make the evening appear like any one of fifty they had all spent together, there was a difference in the atmosphere, a nervousness that could not be altogether due to their alarm and shock at what had happened that afternoon.

Scarlett stole glances at her companions and intercepted a look from India.

It discomforted her because it was a long measuring glance that carried in its cold depths something stronger than hate, something more insulting than contempt.

“As though she thought I was to blame for what happened,” Scarlett thought indignantly.

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India turned from her to Archie and, all annoyance at him gone from her face, gave him a look of veiled anxious inquiry.

But he did not meet her eyes.

He did however look at Scarlett, staring at her in the same cold hard way India had done.

Silence fell dully in the room as Melanie did not take up the conversation again and, in the silence, Scarlett heard the rising wind outside.

It suddenly began to be a most unpleasant evening.

Now she began to feel the tension in the air and she wondered if it had been present all during the evening—and she too upset to notice it.

About Archie’s face there was an alert waiting look and his tufted, hairy old ears seemed pricked up like a lynx’s.

There was a severely repressed uneasiness about Melanie and India that made them raise their heads from their sewing at each sound of hooves in the road, at each groan of bare branches under the wailing wind, at each scuffling sound of dry leaves tumbling across the lawn.

They started at each soft snap of burning logs on the hearth as if they were stealthy footsteps.

Something was wrong and Scarlett wondered what it was.

Something was afoot and she did not know about it.

A glance at Aunt Pitty’s plump guileless face, screwed up in a pout, told her that the old lady was as ignorant as she.

But Archie and Melanie and India knew.

In the silence she could almost feel the thoughts of India and Melanie whirling as madly as squirrels in a cage.

They knew something, were waiting for something, despite their efforts to make things appear as usual.

And their inner unease communicated itself to Scarlett, making her more nervous than before.

Handling her needle awkwardly, she jabbed it into her thumb and with a little scream of pain and annoyance that made them all jump, she squeezed it until a bright red drop appeared.

“I’m just too nervous to sew,” she declared, throwing her mending to the floor.

“I’m nervous enough to scream.

I want to go home and go to bed.

And Frank knew it and he oughtn’t to have gone out.

He talks, talks, talks, about protecting women against darkies and Carpetbaggers and when the time comes for him to do some protecting, where is he?

At home, taking care of me?

No, indeed, he’s gallivanting around with a lot of other men who don’t do anything but talk and—”

Her snapping eyes came to rest on India’s face and she paused.

India was breathing fast and her pale lashless eyes were fastened on Scarlett’s face with a deadly coldness.

“If it won’t pain you too much, India,” she broke off sarcastically, “I’d be much obliged if you’d tell me why you’ve been staring at me all evening.

Has my face turned green or something?”

“It won’t pain me to tell you.

I’ll do it with pleasure,” said India and her eyes glittered.

“I hate to see you underrate a fine man like Mr. Kennedy when, if you knew—”

“India!” said Melanie warningly, her hands clenching on her sewing.

“I think I know my husband better than you do,” said Scarlett, the prospect of a quarrel, the first open quarrel she had ever had with India, making her spirits rise and her nervousness depart.

Melanie’s eyes caught India’s and reluctantly India closed her lips.

But almost instantly she spoke again and her voice was cold with hate.

“You make me sick, Scarlett O’Hara, talking about being protected!

You don’t care about being protected!

If you did you’d never have exposed yourself as you have done all these months, prissing yourself about this town, showing yourself off to strange men, hoping they’ll admire you!

What happened to you this afternoon was just what you deserved and if there was any justice you’d have gotten worse.”

“Oh, India, hush!” cried Melanie.

“Let her talk,” cried Scarlett.

“I’m enjoying it.

I always knew she hated me and she was too much of a hypocrite to admit it.

If she thought anyone would admire her, she’d be walking the streets naked from dawn till dark.”

India was on her feet, her lean body quivering with insult.

“I do hate you,” she said in a clear but trembling voice.

“But it hasn’t been hypocrisy that’s kept me quiet.

It’s something you can’t understand, not possessing any—any common courtesy, common good breeding.

It’s the realization that if all of us don’t hang together and submerge our own small hates, we can’t expect to beat the Yankees.

But you—you—you’ve done all you could to lower the prestige of decent people—working and bringing shame on a good husband, giving Yankees and riffraff the right to laugh at us and make insulting remarks about our lack of gentility.

Yankees don’t know that you aren’t one of us and have never been.

Yankees haven’t sense enough to know that you haven’t any gentility.

And when you’ve ridden about the woods exposing yourself to attack, you’ve exposed every well-behaved woman in town to attack by putting temptation in the ways of darkies and mean white trash.

And you’ve put our men folks’ lives in danger because they’ve got to—”

“My God, India!” cried Melanie and even in her wrath, Scarlett was stunned to hear Melanie take the Lord’s name in vain.

“You must hush!

She doesn’t know and she—you must hush!

You promised—”

“Oh, girls!” pleaded Miss Pittypat, her lips trembling.

“What don’t I know?” Scarlett was on her feet, furious, facing the coldly blazing India and the imploring Melanie.

“Guinea hens,” said Archie suddenly and his voice was contemptuous.

Before anyone could rebuke him, his grizzled head went up sharply and he rose swiftly.

“Somebody comin’ up the walk.

’Tain’t Mr. Wilkes neither.

Cease your cackle.”

There was male authority in his voice and the women stood suddenly silent, anger fading swiftly from their faces as he stumped across the room to the door.

“Who’s thar?” he questioned before the caller even knocked.

“Captain Butler.

Let me in.”

Melanie was across the floor so swiftly that her hoops swayed up violently, revealing her pantalets to the knees, and before Archie could put his hand on the knob she flung the door open.

Rhett Butler stood in the doorway, his black slouch hat low over his eyes, the wild wind whipping his cape about him in snapping folds.

For once his good manners had deserted him.

He neither took off his hat nor spoke to the others in the room.

He had eyes for no one but Melanie and he spoke abruptly without greeting.

“Where have they gone?

Tell me quickly.

It’s life or death.”

Scarlett and Pitty, startled and bewildered, looked at each other in wonderment and, like a lean old cat, India streaked across the room to Melanie’s side.

“Don’t tell him anything,” she cried swiftly.

“He’s a spy, a Scallawag!”

Rhett did not even favor her with a glance.

“Quickly, Mrs. Wilkes!

There may still be time.”

Melanie seemed in a paralysis of terror and only stared into his face.

“What on earth—” began Scarlett.

“Shet yore mouth,” directed Archie briefly.

“You too, Miss Melly.

Git the hell out of here, you damned Scallawag.”

“No, Archie, no!” cried Melanie and she put a shaking hand on Rhett’s arm as though to protect him from Archie.

“What has happened?

How did—how did you know?”

On Rhett’s dark face impatience fought with courtesy.

“Good God, Mrs. Wilkes, they’ve all been under suspicion since the beginning—only they’ve been too clever—until tonight!

How do I know?

I was playing poker with two drunken Yankee captains and they let it out.

The Yankees knew there’d be trouble tonight and they’ve prepared for it.

The fools have walked into a trap.”

For a moment it was as though Melanie swayed under the impact of a heavy blow and Rhett’s arm went around her waist to steady her.

“Don’t tell him!

He’s trying to trap you!” cried India, glaring at Rhett.

“Didn’t you hear him say he’d been with Yankee officers tonight?”

Still Rhett did not look at her.

His eyes were bent insistingly on Melanie’s white face.

“Tell me.

Where did they go?

Have they a meeting place?”

Despite her fear and incomprehension, Scarlett thought she had never seen a blanker, more expressionless face than Rhett’s but evidently Melanie saw something else, something that made her give her trust.

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She straightened her small body away from the steadying arm and said quietly but with a voice that shook: “Out the Decatur road near Shantytown.

They meet in the cellar of the old Sullivan plantation—the one that’s half-burned.”

“Thank you.

I’ll ride fast.

When the Yankees come here, none of you know anything.”

He was gone so swiftly, his black cape melting into the night, that they could hardly realize he had been there at all until they heard the spattering of gravel and the mad pounding of a horse going off at full gallop.

“The Yankees coming here?” cried Pitty and, her small feet turning under her, she collapsed on the sofa, too frightened for tears.

“What’s it all about?

What did he mean?

If you don’t tell me I’ll go crazy!”

Scarlett laid hands on Melanie and shook her violently as if by force she could shake an answer from her.

“Mean?

It means you’ve probably been the cause of Ashley’s and Mr. Kennedy’s death!” In spite of the agony of fear there was a note of triumph in India’s voice. “Stop shaking Melly.

She’s going to faint.”

“No, I’m not,” whispered Melanie, clutching the back of a chair.

“My God, my God!

I don’t understand!

Kill Ashley?

Please, somebody tell me—”

Archie’s voice, like a dusty hinge, cut through Scarlett’s words.

“Set down,” he ordered briefly.

“Pick up yore sewin’.

Sew like nothin’ has happened.

For all we know, the Yankees might have been spyin’ on this house since sundown.

Set down, I say, and sew.”

Trembling they obeyed, even Pitty picking up a sock and holding it in shaking fingers while her eyes, wide as a frightened child’s, went around the circle for an explanation.

“Where is Ashley?

What has happened to him, Melly?” cried Scarlett.

“Where’s your husband?

Aren’t you interested in him?” India’s pale eyes blazed with insane malice as she crumpled and straightened the torn towel she had been mending.

“India, please!”

Melanie had mastered her voice but her white, shaken face and tortured eyes showed the strain under which she was laboring.

“Scarlett, perhaps we should have told you but—but—you had been through so much this afternoon that we—that Frank didn’t think—and you were always so outspoken against the Klan—”

“The Klan—”

At first, Scarlett spoke the word as if she had never heard it before and had no comprehension of its meaning and then: “The Klan!” she almost screamed it.

“Ashley isn’t in the Klan!

Frank can’t be!

Oh, he promised me!”

“Of course, Mr. Kennedy is in the Klan and Ashley, too, and all the men we know,” cried India.

“They are men, aren’t they?

And white men and Southerners.

You should have been proud of him instead of making him sneak out as though it were something shameful and—”

“You all have known all along and I didn’t—”

“We were afraid it would upset you,” said Melanie sorrowfully.

“Then that’s where they go when they’re supposed to be at the political meetings?

Oh, he promised me!

Now, the Yankees will come and take my mills and the store and put him in jail—oh, what did Rhett Butler mean?”

India’s eyes met Melanie’s in wild fear.

Scarlett rose, flinging her sewing down.

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going downtown and find out.

I’ll ask everybody I see until I find—”

“Set,” said Archie, fixing her with his eye.

“I’ll tell you.

Because you went gallivantin’ this afternoon and got yoreself into trouble through yore own fault, Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Kennedy and the other men are out tonight to kill that thar nigger and that thar white man, if they catch them, and wipe out that whole Shantytown settlement.

And if what that Scallawag says is true, the Yankees suspected sumpin’ or got wind somehow and they’ve sont out troops to lay for them.

And our men have walked into a trap.

And if what Butler said warn’t true, then he’s a spy and he is goin’ to turn them up to the Yankees and they’ll git kilt just the same.

And if he does turn them up, then I’ll kill him, if it’s the last deed of m’ life.

And if they ain’t kilt, then they’ll all have to light out of here for Texas and lay low and maybe never come back.

It’s all yore fault and thar’s blood on yore hands.”

Anger wiped out the fear from Melanie’s face as she saw comprehension come slowly across Scarlett’s face and then horror follow swiftly.

She rose and put her hand on Scarlett’s shoulder.

“Another such word and you go out of this house, Archie,” she said sternly.

“It’s not her fault.

She only did—did what she felt she had to do.

And our men did what they felt they had to do.

People must do what they must do.

We don’t all think alike or act alike and it’s wrong to—to judge others by ourselves.

How can you and India say such cruel things when her husband as well as mine may be—may be—”

“Hark!” interrupted Archie softly.

“Set, Ma’m.

Thar’s horses.”

Melanie sank into a chair, picked up one of Ashley’s shirts and, bowing her head over it, unconsciously began to tear the frills into small ribbons.

The sound of hooves grew louder as horses trotted up to the house.

There was the jangling of bits and the strain of leather and the sound of voices.

As the hooves stopped in front of the house, one voice rose above the others in a command and the listeners heard feet going through the side yard toward the back porch.

They felt that a thousand inimical eyes looked at them through the unshaded front window and the four women, with fear in their hearts, bent their heads and plied their needles.

Scarlett’s heart screamed in her breast: “I’ve killed Ashley!

I’ve killed him!”

And in that wild moment she did not even think that she might have killed Frank too.

She had no room in her mind for any picture save that of Ashley, lying at the feet of Yankee cavalrymen, his fair hair dappled with blood.

As the harsh rapid knocking sounded at the door, she looked at Melanie and saw come over the small, strained face a new expression, an expression as blank as she had just seen on Rhett Butler’s face, the bland blank look of a poker player bluffing a game with only two deuces.

“Archie, open the door,” she said quietly.

Slipping his knife into his boot top and loosening the pistol in his trouser band, Archie stumped over to the door and flung it open.

Pitty gave a little squeak, like a mouse who feels the trap snap down, as she saw massed in the doorway, a Yankee captain and a squad of bluecoats.

But the others said nothing.

Scarlett saw with the faintest feeling of relief that she knew this officer.

He was Captain Tom Jaffery, one of Rhett’s friends.

She had sold him lumber to build his house.

She knew him to be a gentleman.

Perhaps, as he was a gentleman, he wouldn’t drag them away to prison.

He recognized her instantly and, taking off his hat, bowed, somewhat embarrassed.

“Good evening, Mrs. Kennedy. And which of you ladies is Mrs. Wilkes?”

“I am Mrs. Wilkes,” answered Melanie, rising and for all her smallness, dignity flowed from her.

“And to what do I owe this intrusion?”

The eyes of the captain flickered quickly about the room, resting for an instant on each face, passing quickly from their faces to the table and hat rack as though looking for signs of male occupancy.

“I should like to speak to Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Kennedy, if you please.”

“They are not here,” said Melanie, a chill in her soft voice.

“Are you sure?”

“Don’t you question Miz Wilkes’ word,” said Archie, his beard bristling.

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Wilkes. I meant no disrespect.

If you give me your word, I will not search the house.”

“You have my word.

But search if you like.

They are at a meeting downtown at Mr. Kennedy’s store.”

“They are not at the store.

There was no meeting tonight,” answered the captain grimly.

“We will wait outside until they return.”

He bowed briefly and went out, closing the door behind him.

Those in the house heard a sharp order, muffled by the wind: “Surround the house.

A man at each window and door.”

There was a tramping of feet.

Scarlett checked a start of terror as she dimly saw bearded faces peering in the windows at them.

Melanie sat down and with a hand that did not tremble reached for a book on the table.

It was a ragged copy of Les Misérables, that book which caught the fancy of the Confederate soldiers.

They had read it by camp-fire light and took some grim pleasure in calling it “Lee’s Miserables.”

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She opened it at the middle and began to read in a clear monotonous voice.

“Sew,” commanded Archie in a hoarse whisper and the three women, nerved by Melanie’s cool voice, picked up their sewing and bowed their heads.

How long Melanie read beneath that circle of watching eyes, Scarlett never knew but it seemed hours.

She did not even hear a word that Melanie read.

Now she was beginning to think of Frank as well as Ashley.

So this was the explanation of his apparent calm this evening!

He had promised her he would have nothing to do with the Klan.

Oh, this was just the kind of trouble she had feared would come upon them!

All the work of this last year would go for nothing.

All her struggles and fears and labors in rain and cold had been wasted.

And who would have thought that spiritless old Frank would get himself mixed up in the hot-headed doings of the Klan?

Even at this minute, he might be dead.

And if he wasn’t dead and the Yankees caught him, he’d be hanged.

And Ashley, too!

Her nails dug into her palms until four bright-red crescents showed.

How could Melanie read on and on so calmly when Ashley was in danger of being hanged?

When he might be dead?

But something in the cool soft voice reading the sorrows of Jean Valjean steadied her, kept her from leaping to her feet and screaming.

Her mind fled back to the night Tony Fontaine had come to them, hunted, exhausted, without money.

If he had not reached their house and received money and a fresh horse, he would have been hanged long since.

If Frank and Ashley were not dead at this very minute, they were in Tony’s position, only worse.

With the house surrounded by soldiers they couldn’t come home and get money and clothes without being captured.

And probably every house up and down the street had a similar guard of Yankees, so they could not apply to friends for aid.

Even now they might be riding wildly through the night, bound for Texas.

But Rhett—perhaps Rhett had reached them in time.

Rhett always had plenty of cash in his pocket.

Perhaps he would lend them enough to see them through.

But that was queer.

Why should Rhett bother himself about Ashley’s safety?

Certainly he disliked him, certainly he professed a contempt for him.

Then why—But this riddle was swallowed up in a renewed fear for the safety of Ashley and Frank.

“Oh, it’s all my fault!” she wailed to herself.

“India and Archie spoke the truth.

It’s all my fault.

But I never thought either of them was foolish enough to join the Klan!

And I never thought anything would really happen to me!

But I couldn’t have done otherwise.

Melly spoke the truth.

People have to do what they have to do.

And I had to keep the mills going!

I had to have money!

And now I’ll probably lose it all and somehow it’s all my fault!”

After a long time Melanie’s voice faltered, trailed off and was silent.

She turned her head toward the window and stared as though no Yankee soldiers stared back from behind the glass.

The others raised their heads, caught by her listening pose, and they too listened.

There was a sound of horses’ feet and of singing, deadened by the closed windows and doors, borne away by the wind but still recognizable.

It was the most hated and hateful of all songs, the song about Sherman’s men—“Marching through Georgia” and Rhett Butler was singing it.

Hardly had he finished the first lines when two other voices, drunken voices, assailed him, enraged foolish voices that stumbled over words and blurred them together.

There was a quick command from Captain Jaffery on the front porch and the rapid tramp of feet.

But even before these sounds arose, the ladies looked at one another stunned.

For the drunken voices expostulating with Rhett were those of Ashley and Hugh Elsing.

Voices rose louder on the front walk, Captain Jaffery’s curt and questioning, Hugh’s shrill with foolish laughter, Rhett’s deep and reckless and Ashley’s queer, unreal, shouting: “What the hell!

What the hell!”

“That can’t be Ashley!” thought Scarlett wildly.

“He never gets drunk!

And Rhett—why, when Rhett’s drunk he gets quieter and quieter—never loud like that!”

Melanie rose and, with her, Archie rose.

They heard the captain’s sharp voice: “These two men are under arrest.”

And Archie’s hand closed over his pistol butt.

“No,” whispered Melanie firmly.

“No.

Leave it to me.”

There was in her face the same look Scarlett had seen that day at Tara when Melanie had stood at the top of the steps, looking down at the dead Yankee, her weak wrist weighed down by the heavy saber—a gentle and timid soul nerved by circumstances to the caution and fury of a tigress.

She threw the front door open.

“Bring him in, Captain Butler,” she called in a clear tone that bit with venom.

“I suppose you’ve gotten him intoxicated again.

Bring him in.”

From the dark windy walk, the Yankee captain spoke: “I’m sorry, Mrs. Wilkes, but your husband and Mr. Elsing are under arrest.”

“Arrest?

For what?

For drunkenness?

If everyone in Atlanta was arrested for drunkenness, the whole Yankee garrison would be in jail continually.

Well, bring him in, Captain Butler—that is, if you can walk yourself.”

Scarlett’s mind was not working quickly and for a brief moment nothing made sense.

She knew neither Rhett nor Ashley was drunk and she knew Melanie knew they were not drunk.

Yet here was Melanie, usually so gentle and refined, screaming like a shrew and in front of Yankees too, that both of them were too drunk to walk.

There was a short mumbled argument, punctuated with curses, and uncertain feet ascended the stairs.

In the doorway appeared Ashley, white faced, his head lolling, his bright hair tousled, his long body wrapped from neck to knees in Rhett’s black cape.

Hugh Elsing and Rhett, none too steady on their feet, supported him on either side and it was obvious he would have fallen to the floor but for their aid.

Behind them came the Yankee captain, his face a study of mingled suspicion and amusement.

He stood in the open doorway with his men peering curiously over his shoulders and the cold wind swept the house.

Scarlett, frightened, puzzled, glanced at Melanie and back to the sagging Ashley and then half-comprehension came to her.

She started to cry out: “But he can’t be drunk!” and bit back the words.

She realized she was witnessing a play, a desperate play on which lives hinged.

She knew she was not part of it nor was Aunt Pitty but the others were and they were tossing cues to one another like actors in an oft-rehearsed drama.

She understood only half but she understood enough to keep silent.

“Put him in the chair,” cried Melanie indignantly.

“And you, Captain Butler, leave this house immediately!

How dare you show your face here after getting him in this condition again!”

The two men eased Ashley into a rocker and Rhett, swaying, caught hold of the back of the chair to steady himself and addressed the captain with pain in his voice.

“That’s fine thanks I get, isn’t it?

For keeping the police from getting him and bringing him home and him yelling and trying to claw me!”

“And you, Hugh Elsing, I’m ashamed of you!

What will your poor mother say?

Drunk and out with a—a Yankee-loving Scallawag like Captain Butler!

And, oh, Mr. Wilkes, how could you do such a thing?”

“Melly, I ain’t so very drunk,” mumbled Ashley, and with the words fell forward and lay face down on the table, his head buried in his arms.

“Archie, take him to his room and put him to bed—as usual,” ordered Melanie.

“Aunt Pitty, please run and fix the bed and oo-oh,” she suddenly burst into tears.

“Oh, how could he?

After he promised!”

Archie already had his arm under Ashley’s shoulder and Pitty, frightened and uncertain, was on her feet when the captain interposed.

“Don’t touch him.

He’s under arrest.

Sergeant!”

As the sergeant stepped into the room, his rifle at trail, Rhett, evidently trying to steady himself, put a hand on the captain’s arm and, with difficulty, focused his eyes.

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“Tom, what you arresting him for?

He ain’t so very drunk.

I’ve seen him drunker.”

“Drunk be damned,” cried the captain.

“He can lie in the gutter for all I care.

I’m no policeman.

He and Mr. Elsing are under arrest for complicity in a Klan raid at Shantytown tonight.

A nigger and a white man were killed.

Mr. Wilkes was the ringleader in it.”

“Tonight?”

Rhett began to laugh.

He laughed so hard that he sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands.

“Not tonight, Tom,” he said when he could speak.

“These two have been with me tonight—ever since eight o’clock when they were supposed to be at the meeting.”

“With you, Rhett?

But—”

A frown came over the captain’s forehead and he looked uncertainly at the snoring Ashley and his weeping wife.

“But—where were you?”

“I don’t like to say,” and Rhett shot a look of drunken cunning at Melanie.

“You’d better say!”

“Let’s go out on the porch and I’ll tell you where we were.”

“You’ll tell me now.”

“Hate to say it in front of ladies.

If you ladies’ll step out of the room—”

“I won’t go,” cried Melanie, dabbing angrily at her eyes with her handkerchief. “I have a right to know.

Where was my husband?”

“At Belle Watling’s sporting house,” said Rhett, looking abashed.

“He was there and Hugh and Frank Kennedy and Dr. Meade and—and a whole lot of them.

Had a party.

Big party. Champagne. Girls—”

“At—at Belle Watling’s?”

Melanie’s voice rose until it cracked with such pain that all eyes turned frightenedly to her.

Her hand went clutching at her bosom and, before Archie could catch her, she had fainted.

Then a hubbub ensued, Archie picking her up, India running to the kitchen for water, Pitty and Scarlett fanning her and slapping her wrists, while Hugh Elsing shouted over and over: “Now you’ve done it!

Now you’ve done it!”

“Now it’ll be all over town,” said Rhett savagely.

“I hope you’re satisfied, Tom.

There won’t be a wife in Atlanta who’ll speak to her husband tomorrow.”

“Rhett, I had no idea—”

Though the chill wind was blowing through the open door on his back, the captain was perspiring.

“Look here!

You take oath they were at—er—at Belle’s?”

“Hell, yes,” growled Rhett.

“Go ask Belle herself if you don’t believe me.

Now, let me carry Mrs. Wilkes to her room.

Give her to me, Archie.

Yes, I can carry her.

Miss Pitty, go ahead with a lamp.”

He took Melanie’s limp body from Archie’s arms with ease.

“You get Mr. Wilkes to bed, Archie.

I don’t want to ever lay eyes or hands on him again after this night.”

Pitty’s hand trembled so that the lamp was a menace to the safety of the house but she held it and trotted ahead toward the dark bedroom.

Archie, with a grunt, got an arm under Ashley and raised him.

“But—I’ve got to arrest these men!”

Rhett turned in the dim hallway.

“Arrest them in the morning then.

They can’t run away in this condition—and I never knew before that it was illegal to get drunk in a sporting house.

Good God, Tom, there are fifty witnesses to prove they were at Belle’s.”

“There are always fifty witnesses to prove a Southerner was somewhere where he wasn’t,” said the captain morosely.

“You come with me, Mr. Elsing. I’ll parole Mr. Wilkes on the word of—”

“I am Mr. Wilkes’ sister. I will answer for his appearance,” said India coldly.

“Now, will you please go?

You’ve caused enough trouble for one night.”

“I regret it exceedingly.”

The captain bowed awkwardly.

“I only hope they can prove their presence at the—er—Miss—Mrs. Watling’s house.

Will you tell your brother that he must appear before the provost marshal tomorrow morning for questioning?”

India bowed coldly and, putting her hand upon the door knob, intimated silently that his speedy retirement would be welcome.

The captain and the sergeant backed out, Hugh Elsing with them, and she slammed the door behind them.

Without even looking at Scarlett, she went swiftly to each window and drew down the shade.

Scarlett, her knees shaking, caught hold of the chair in which Ashley had been sitting to steady herself.

Looking down at it, she saw that there was a dark moist spot, larger than her palm.

“India,” she whispered, “India, Ashley’s—he’s hurt.”

“You fool!

Did you think he was really drunk?”

India snapped down the last shade and started on flying feet for the bedroom, with Scarlett close behind her, her heart in her throat.

Rhett’s big body barred the doorway but, past his shoulder, Scarlett saw Ashley lying white and still on the bed.

Melanie, strangely quick for one so recently in a faint, was rapidly cutting off his blood-soaked shirt with embroidery scissors.

Archie held the lamp low over the bed to give light and one of his gnarled fingers was on Ashley’s wrist.

“Is he dead?” cried both girls together.

“No, just fainted from loss of blood.

It’s through his shoulder,” said Rhett.

“Why did you bring him here, you fool?” cried India.

“Let me get to him!

Let me pass!

Why did you bring him here to be arrested?”

“He was too weak to travel.

There was nowhere else to bring him, Miss Wilkes.

Besides—do you want him to be an exile like Tony Fontaine?

Do you want a dozen of your neighbors to live in Texas under assumed names for the rest of their lives?

There’s a chance that we may get them all off if Belle—”

“Let me pass!”

“No, Miss Wilkes. There’s work for you.

You must go for a doctor—Not Dr. Meade.

He’s implicated in this and is probably explaining to the Yankees at this very minute.

Get some other doctor.

Are you afraid to go out alone at night?”

“No,” said India, her pale eyes glittering.

“I’m not afraid.”

She caught up Melanie’s hooded cape which was hanging on a hook in the hall.

“I’ll go for old Dr. Dean.”

The excitement went out of her voice as, with an effort, she forced calmness.

“I’m sorry I called you a spy and a fool.

I did not understand.

I’m deeply grateful for what you’ve done for Ashley—but I despise you just the same.”

“I appreciate frankness—and I thank you for it.”

Rhett bowed and his lip curled down in an amused smile.

“Now, go quickly and by back ways and when you return do not come in this house if you see signs of soldiers about.”

India shot one more quick anguished look at Ashley, and, wrapping her cape about her, ran lightly down the hall to the back door and let herself out quietly into the night.

Scarlett, straining her eyes past Rhett, felt her heart beat again as she saw Ashley’s eyes open.

Melanie snatched a folded towel from the washstand rack and pressed it against his streaming shoulder and he smiled up weakly, reassuringly into her face.

Scarlett felt Rhett’s hard penetrating eyes upon her, knew that her heart was plain upon her face, but she did not care.

Ashley was bleeding, perhaps dying and she who loved him had torn that hole through his shoulder.

She wanted to run to the bed, sink down beside it and clasp him to her but her knees trembled so that she could not enter the room.

Hand at her mouth, she stared while Melanie packed a fresh towel against his shoulder, pressing it hard as though she could force back the blood into his body.

But the towel reddened as though by magic.

How could a man bleed so much and still live?

But, thank God, there was no bubble of blood at his lips—oh, those frothy red bubbles, forerunners of death that she knew so well from the dreadful day of the battle at Peachtree Creek when the wounded had died on Aunt Pitty’s lawn with bloody mouths.

“Brace up,” said Rhett, and there was a hard, faintly jeering note in his voice.

“He won’t die.

Now, go take the lamp and hold it for Mrs. Wilkes. I need Archie to run errands.”

Archie looked across the lamp at Rhett.

“I ain’t takin’ no orders from you,” he said briefly, shifting his wad of tobacco to the other cheek.

“You do what he says,” said Melanie sternly, “and do it quickly.

Do everything Captain Butler says.

Scarlett, take the lamp.”

Scarlett went forward and took the lamp, holding it in both hands to keep from dropping it.

Ashley’s eyes had closed again.

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His bare chest heaved up slowly and sank quickly and the red stream seeped from between Melanie’s small frantic fingers.

Dimly she heard Archie stump across the room to Rhett and heard Rhett’s low rapid words.

Her mind was so fixed upon Ashley that of the first half-whispered words of Rhett, she only heard: “Take my horse… tied outside… ride like hell.”

Archie mumbled some question and Scarlett heard Rhett reply: “The old Sullivan plantation.

You’ll find the robes pushed up the biggest chimney.

Burn them.”

“Um,” grunted Archie.

“And there’s two—men in the cellar.

Pack them over the horse as best you can and take them to that vacant lot behind Belle’s—the one between her house and the railroad tracks.

Be careful.

If anyone sees you, you’ll hang as well as the rest of us.

Put them in that lot and put pistols near them—in their hands.

Here—take mine.”

Scarlett, looking across the room, saw Rhett reach under his coat tails and produce two revolvers which Archie took and shoved into his waist band.

“Fire one shot from each.

It’s got to appear like a plain case of shooting.

You understand?”

Archie nodded as if he understood perfectly and an unwilling gleam of respect shone in his cold eye.

But understanding was far from Scarlett.

The last half-hour had been so nightmarish that she felt nothing would ever be plain and clear again.

However, Rhett seemed in perfect command of the bewildering situation and that was a small comfort.

Archie turned to go and then swung about and his one eye went questioningly to Rhett’s face.

“Him?”

“Yes.”

Archie grunted and spat on the floor.

“Hell to pay,” he said as he stumped down the hall to the back door.

Something in the last low interchange of words made a new fear and suspicion rise up in Scarlett’s breast like a chill ever-swelling bubble.

When that bubble break— “Where’s Frank?” she cried.

Rhett came swiftly across the room to the bed, his big body swinging as lightly and noiselessly as a cat’s.

“All in good time,” he said and smiled briefly.

“Steady that lamp, Scarlett.

You don’t want to burn Mr. Wilkes up.

Miss Melly—”

Melanie looked up like a good soldier awaiting a command and so tense was the situation it did not occur to her that for the first time Rhett was calling her familiarly by the name which only family and old friends used.

“I beg your pardon, I mean, Mrs. Wilkes…. ”

“Oh, Captain Butler, do not ask my pardon!

I should feel honored if you called me ‘Melly’ without the Miss!

I feel as though you were my—my brother or—or my cousin.

How kind you are and how clever!

How can I ever thank you enough?”

“Thank you,” said Rhett and for a moment he looked almost embarrassed.

“I should never presume so far, but Miss Melly,” and his voice was apologetic, “I’m sorry I had to say that Mr. Wilkes was in Belle Watling’s house.

I’m sorry to have involved him and the others in such a—a—But I had to think fast when I rode away from here and that was the only plan that occurred to me.

I knew my word would be accepted because I have so many friends among the Yankee officers.

They do me the dubious honor of thinking me almost one of them because they know my—shall we call it my ‘unpopularity’?—among my townsmen.

And you see, I was playing poker in Belle’s bar earlier in the evening.

There are a dozen Yankee soldiers who can testify to that.

And Belle and her girls will gladly lie themselves black in the face and say Mr. Wilkes and the others were—upstairs all evening.

And the Yankees will believe them.

Yankees are queer that way.

It won’t occur to them that women of—their profession are capable of intense loyalty or patriotism.

The Yankees wouldn’t take the word of a single nice Atlanta lady as to the whereabouts of the men who were supposed to be at the meeting tonight but they will take the word of—fancy ladies.

And I think that between the word of honor of a Scallawag and a dozen fancy ladies, we may have a chance of getting the men off.”

There was a sardonic grin on his face at the last words but it faded as Melanie turned up to him a face that blazed with gratitude.

“Captain Butler, you are so smart!

I wouldn’t have cared if you’d said they were in hell itself tonight, if it saves them!

For I know and every one else who matters knows that my husband was never in a dreadful place like that!”

“Well—” began Rhett awkwardly, “as a matter of fact, he was at Belle’s tonight.”

Melanie drew herself up coldly.

“You can never make me believe such a lie!”

“Please, Miss Melly!

Let me explain!

When I got out to the old Sullivan place tonight, I found Mr. Wilkes wounded and with him were Hugh Elsing and Dr. Meade and old man Merriwether—”

“Not the old gentleman!” cried Scarlett.

“Men are never too old to be fools.

And your Uncle Henry—”

“Oh, mercy!” cried Aunt Pitty.

“The others had scattered after the brush with the troops and the crowd that stuck together had come to the Sullivan place to hide their robes in the chimney and to see how badly Mr. Wilkes was hurt.

But for his wound, they’d be headed for Texas by now—all of them—but he couldn’t ride far and they wouldn’t leave him.

It was necessary to prove that they had been somewhere instead of where they had been, and so I took them by back ways to Belle Watling’s.”

“Oh—I see. I do beg your pardon for my rudeness, Captain Butler. I see now it was necessary to take them there but—Oh, Captain Butler, people must have seen you going in!”

“No one saw us.

We went in through a private back entrance that opens on the railroad tracks.

It’s always dark and locked.”

“Then how—?”

“I have a key,” said Rhett laconically, and his eyes met Melanie’s evenly.

As the full impact of the meaning smote her, Melanie became so embarrassed that she fumbled with the bandage until it slid off the wound entirely.

“I did not mean to pry—” she said in a muffled voice, her white face reddening, as she hastily pressed the towel back into place.

“I regret having to tell a lady such a thing.”

“Then it’s true!” thought Scarlett with an odd pang.

“Then he does live with that dreadful Watling creature!

He does own her house!”

“I saw Belle and explained to her.

We gave her a list of the men who were out tonight and she and her girls will testify that they were all in her house tonight.

Then to make our exit more conspicuous, she called the two desperadoes who keep order at her place and had us dragged downstairs, fighting, and through the barroom and thrown out into the street as brawling drunks who were disturbing the place.”

He grinned reminiscently.

“Dr. Meade did not make a very convincing drunk.

It hurt his dignity to even be in such a place.

But your Uncle Henry and old man Merriwether were excellent.

The stage lost two great actors when they did not take up the drama.

They seemed to enjoy the affair.

I’m afraid your Uncle Henry has a black eye due to Mr. Merriwether’s zeal for his part.

He—”

The back door swung open and India entered, followed by old Dr. Dean, his long white hair tumbled, his worn leather bag bulging under his cape.

He nodded briefly but without words to those present and quickly lifted the bandage from Ashley’s shoulder.

“Too high for the lung,” he said.

“If it hasn’t splintered his collar bone it’s not so serious.

Get me plenty of towels, ladies, and cotton if you have it, and some brandy.”

Rhett took the lamp from Scarlett and set it on the table as Melanie and India sped about, obeying the doctor’s orders.

“You can’t do anything here.

Come into the parlor by the fire.”

He took her arm and propelled her from the room.

There was a gentleness foreign to him in both hand and voice.

“You’ve had a rotten day, haven’t you?”

She allowed herself to be led into the front room and though she stood on the hearth rug in front of the fire she began to shiver.

The bubble of suspicion in her breast was swelling larger now.

It was more than a suspicion.

It was almost a certainty and a terrible certainty.

She looked up into Rhett’s immobile face and for a moment she could not speak.

Then: “Was Frank at—Belle Watling’s?”

“No.”

Rhett’s voice was blunt.

“Archie’s carrying him to the vacant lot near Belle’s.

He’s dead.

Shot through the head.”