She laid the whip on the tired horse’s back and tried to urge him on while the waggling wheels rocked them drunkenly from side to side.
?
There was death in the air. In the rays of the late afternoon sun, every well-remembered field and forest grove was green and still, with an unearthly quiet that struck terror to Scarlett’s heart. Every empty, shell-pitted house they had passed that day, every gaunt chimney standing sentinel over smoke-blackened ruins, had frightened her more. They had not seen a living human being or animal since the night before. Dead men and dead horses, yes, and dead mules, lying by the road, swollen, covered with flies, but nothing alive. No far-off cattle lowed, no birds sang, no wind waved the trees. Only the tired plop-plop of the horse’s feet and the weak wailing of Melanie’s baby broke the stillness.
The countryside lay as under some dread enchantment Or worse still, thought Scarlett with a chill, like the familiar and dear face of a mother, beautiful and quiet at last, after death agonies. She felt that the once-familiar woods were full of ghosts. Thousands had died in the fighting near Jonesboro. They were here in these haunted woods where the slanting afternoon sun gleamed eerily through unmoving leaves, friends and foes, peering at her in her rickety wagon, through eyes blinded with blood and red dust—glazed, horrible eyes.
“Mother! Mother!” she whispered. If she could only win to Ellen! If only, by a miracle of God, Tara were still standing and she could drive up the long avenue of trees and go into the house and see her mother’s kind, tender face, could feel once more the soft capable hands that drove out fear, could clutch Ellen’s skirts and bury her face in them. Mother would know what to do. She wouldn’t let Melanie and her baby die. She would drive away all ghosts and fears with her quiet “Hush, hush.” But Mother was ill, perhaps dying.
Scarlett laid the whip across the weary rump of the horse. They must go faster! They had crept along this never-ending road all the long hot day. Soon it would be night and they would be alone in this desolation that was death. She gripped the reins tighter with hands that were blistered and slapped them fiercely on the horse’s back, her aching arms burning at the movement.
If she could only reach the kind arms of Tara and Ellen and lay down her burdens, far too heavy for her young shoulders—the dying woman, the fading baby, her own hungry little boy, the frightened negro, all looking to her for strength, for guidance, all reading in her straight back courage she did not possess and strength which had long since failed.
The exhausted horse did not respond to the whip or reins but shambled on, dragging his feet, stumbling on small rocks and swaying as if ready to fall to his knees. But, as twilight came, they at last entered the final lap of the long journey. They rounded the bend of the wagon path and turned into the main road. Tara was only a mile away!
Here loomed up the dark bulk of the mock-orange hedge that marked the beginning of the Macintosh property. A little farther on, Scarlett drew rein in front of the avenue of oaks that led from the road to old Angus Macintosh’s house. She peered through the gathering dusk down the two lines of ancient trees. All was dark. Not a single light showed in the house or in the quarters. Straining her eyes in the darkness she dimly discerned a sight which had grown familiar through that terrible day—two tall chimneys, like gigantic tombstones towering above the ruined second floor, and broken unlit windows blotching the walls like still, blind eyes.
“Hello!” she shouted, summoning all her strength. “Hello!”
Prissy clawed at her in a frenzy of fright and Scarlett, turning, saw that her eyes were rolling in her head.
“Doan holler, Miss Scarlett! Please, doan holler agin!” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Dey ain’ no tellin’ whut mout answer!”
“Dear God!” thought Scarlett, a shiver running through her. “Dear God! She’s right Anything might come out of there!”
She flapped the reins and urged the horse forward. The sight of the Macintosh house had pricked the last bubble of hope remaining to her. It was burned, in rums, deserted, as were all the plantations she had passed that day. Tara lay only half a mite away, on the same road, right in the path of the army. Tara was leveled, too! She would find only the blackened bricks, starlight shining through the roofless walls, Ellen and Gerald gone, the girls gone, Mammy gone, the negroes gone, God knows where, and this hideous stillness over everything.
Why had she come on this fool’s errand, against all common sense, dragging Melanie and her child? Better that they had died in Atlanta than, tortured by this day of burning sun and jolting wagon, to die in the silent ruins of Tara.
But Ashley had left Melanie in her care. Take care of her.” Oh, that beautiful, heartbreaking day when he had kissed her good-by before he went away forever! “You’ll take care of her, won’t you? Promise!” And she had promised. Why had she ever bound herself with such a promise, doubly binding now that Ashley was gone? Even in her exhaustion she hated Melanie, hated the tiny mewing voice of her child which, fainter and fainter, pierced the stillness. But she had promised and now they belonged to her, even as Wade and Prissy belonged to her, and she must struggle and fight for them as long as she had strength or breath. She could have left them in Atlanta, dumped Melanie into the hospital and deserted her. But had she done that, she could never face Ashley, either on this earth or in the hereafter and tell him she had left his wife and child to die among strangers.
Oh, Ashley! Where was he tonight while she toiled down this haunted road with his wife and baby? Was he alive and did he think of her as he lay behind the bars at Rock Island? Or was he dead of smallpox months ago, rotting in some long ditch with hundreds of other Confederates?
