They couldn't be more than fifteen miles from home,but at the rate this old nag traveled it would take all day,for she would have to stop frequently to rest him.All day!She looked down the glaring red road,cut in deep ruts where cannon wheels and ambulances had gone over it.It would be hours before she knew if Tara still stood and if Ellen were there.It would be hours before she finished her journey under the broiling September sun.
She looked back at Melanie who lay with sick eyes closed against the sun and jerked loose the strings of her bonnet and tossed it to Prissy.
“Put that over her face.It'll keep the sun out of her eyes.”Then as the heat beat down upon her unprotected head,she thought:“I'll be as freckled as a guinea egg before this day is over.”
She had never in her life been out in the sunshine without a hat or veils,never handled reins without gloves to protect the white skin of her dimpled hands.Yet here she was exposed to the sun in a broken-down wagon with a broken-down horse,dirty,sweaty,hungry,helpless to do anything but plod along at a snail's pace through a deserted land.What a few short weeks it had been since she was safe and secure!What a little while since she and everyone else had thought that Atlanta could never fall,that Georgia could never be invaded.But the small cloud which appeared in the northwest four months ago had blown up into a mighty storm and then into a screaming tornado,sweeping away her world,whirling her out of her sheltered life,and dropping her down in the midst of this still,haunted desolation.
Was Tara still standing?Or was Tara also gone with the wind which had swept through Georgia?
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.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!”
