“Alex said he saw him come out on the street,chargin'like a bull.He said the old gentleman looked like his old self for the first time since your ma died.Said he was reelin'drunk and cussin'at the top of his lungs.Alex said he never heard such fine cussin'.Alex's horse was standin'there and your pa climbed on it without a by-your-leave and off he went in a cloud of dust so thick it choked you,cussin'every breath he drew.
“Well,about sundown Ashley and me were sittin'on the front step,lookin'down the road and mighty worried.Miss Melly was upstairs cryin'on her bed and wouldn't tell us nothin'.Terrectly,we heard a poundin'down the road and somebody yellin'like they was fox huntin'and Ashley said:‘That's queer!That sounds like Mr.O'Hara when he used to ride over to see us before the war.’
“And then we seen him way down at the end of the pasture.He must have jumped the fence right over there.And he come ridin'hell-for-leather up the hill,singin'at the top of his voice like he didn't have a care in the world.I didn't know your pa had such a voice.He was singin'‘Peg in a Low-backed Car'and beatin'the horse with his hat and the horse was goin'like mad.He didn't draw rein when he come near the top and we seen he was goin'to jump the pasture fence and we hopped up,scared to death,and then he yelled:‘Look,Ellen!Watch me take this one!'But the horse stopped right on his haunches at the fence and wouldn't take the jump and your pa went right over his head.He didn't suffer none.He was dead time we got to him.I guess it broke his neck.”
Will waited a minute for her to speak and when she did not he picked up the reins.“Giddap,Sherman,”he said,and the horse started on toward home.
Chapter 40
Scarlett slept little that night.When the dawn had come and the sun was creeping over the black pines on the hills to the east,she rose from her tumbled bed and,seating herself on a stool by the window,laid her tired head on her arm and looked out over the barn yard and orchard of Tara toward the cotton fields.Everything was fresh and dewy and silent and green and the sight of the cotton fields brought a measure of balm and comfort to her sore heart.Tara,at sunrise,looked loved,well tended and at peace,for all that its master lay dead.The squatty log chicken house was clay daubed against rats and weasels and clean with whitewash,and so was the log stable.The garden with its rows of corn,bright-yellow squash,butter beans and turnips was well weeded and neatly fenced with split-oak rails.The orchard was cleared of underbrush and only daisies grew beneath the long rows of trees.The sun picked out with faint glistening the apples and the furred pink peaches half hidden in the green leaves.Beyond lay the curving rows of cotton,still and green under the gold of the new sky.The ducks and chickens were waddling and strutting off toward the fields,for under the bushes in the soft plowed earth were found the choicest worms and slugs.
Scarlett's heart swelled with affection and gratitude to Will who had done all of this.Even her loyalty to Ashley could not make her believe he had been responsible for much of this well-being,for Tara's bloom was not the work of a planter-aristocrat,but of the plodding,tireless “small farmer”who loved his land.It was a “two-horse”farm,not the lordly plantation of other days with pastures full of mules and fine horses and cotton and corn stretching as far as the eye could see.But what there was of it was good and the acres that were lying fallow could be reclaimed when times grew better,and they would be the more fertile for their rest.
Will had done more than merely farm a few acres.He had kept sternly at bay those two enemies of Georgia planters,the seedling pine and the blackberry brambles.They had not stealthily taken garden and pasture and cotton field and lawn and reared themselves insolently by the porches of Tara as they were doing on numberless plantations throughout the state.
Scarlett's heart failed a beat when she thought how close Tara had come to going back to wilderness.Between herself and Will,they had done a good job.They had held off the Yankees,the Carpetbaggers and the encroachments of Nature.And,best of all,Will had told her that after the cotton came in in the fall,she need send no more money—unless some other Carpetbagger coveted Tara and skyrocketed the taxes.Scarlett knew Will would have a hard pull without her help but she admired and respected his independence.As long as he was in the position of hired help he would take her money,but now that he was to become her brother-in-law and the man of the house,he intended to stand on his own efforts.Yes,Will was something the Lord had provided.
Pork had dug the grave the night before,close by Ellen's grave,and he stood,spade in hand,behind the moist red clay he was soon to shovel back in place.Scarlett stood behind him in the patchy shade of a gnarled low-limbed cedar,the hot sun of the June morning dappling her,and tried to keep her eyes away from the red trench in front of her.Jim Tarleton,little Hugh Munroe,Alex Fontaine and old man McRae's youngest grandson came slowly and awkwardly down the path from the house bearing Gerald's coffin on two lengths of split oak.Behind them,at a respectful distance,followed a large straggling crowd of neighbors and friends,shabbily dressed,silent.As they came down the sunny path through the garden,Pork bowed his head upon the top of the spade handle and cried;and Scarlett saw with incurious surprise that the kinks on his head,so jettily black when she went to Atlanta a few months before,were now grizzled.
