“So they were, Daughter. We saw the smoke from Twelve Oaks, across the river, before they came. But Miss Honey and Miss India and some of their darkies had refugeed to Macon, so we did not worry about them. But we couldn’t be going to Macon. The girls were so sick— your mother — we couldn’t be going. Our darkies ran — I’m not knowing where. They stole the wagons and the mules. Mammy and Dilcey and Pork — they didn’t run. The girls — your mother — we couldn’t be moving them.

“Yes, yes.” He mustn’t talk about Mother. Anything else. Even that General Sherman himself had used this room, Mother’s office, for his headquarters. Anything else.

“The Yankees were moving on Jonesboro, to cut the railroad. And they came up the road from the river— thousands and thousands — and cannon and horses — thousands. I met them on the front porch.”

“Oh, gallant little Gerald!” thought Scarlett, her heart swelling, Gerald meeting the enemy on the stairs of Tara as if an army stood behind him instead of in front of him.

“They said for me to leave, that they would be burning the place. And I said that they would be burning it over my head. We could not leave— the girls — your mother were —”

“And then?” Must he revert to Ellen always?

“I told them there was sickness in the house, the typhoid, and it was death to move them. They could burn the roof over us. I did not want to leave anyway— leave Tara —”

His voice trailed off into silence as he looked absently about the walls and Scarlet! understood. There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald’s shoulders, men who had died on scant acres, fighting to the end rather than leave the homes where they had lived, plowed, loved, begotten sons.

“I said that they would be burning the house over the heads of three dying women. But we would not leave. The young officer was— was a gentleman.”

“A Yankee a gentleman? Why, Pa!”

“A gentleman. He galloped away and soon he was back with a captain, a surgeon, and he looked at the girls— and your mother.”

“You let a damned Yankee into their room?”

“He had opium. We had none. He saved your sisters. Suellen was hemorrhaging. He was as kind as he knew how. And when he reported that they were— ill —th ey did not burn the house. They moved in, some general, his staff, crowding in. They filled all the rooms except the sick room. And the soldiers —”

He paused again, as if too tired to go on. His stubbly chin sank heavily in loose folds of flesh on his chest With an effort he spoke again.

They camped all round the house, everywhere, in the cotton, in the corn. The pasture was blue with them. That night there were a thousand campfires. They tore down the fences and burned them to cook with and the barns and the stables and the smokehouse. They killed the cows and the hogs and the chickens— even my turkeys.” Gerald’s precious turkeys. So they were gone. They took things, even the pictures — some of the furniture, the china — ”

“The silver?”

“Pork and Mammy did something with the silver— put it in the well — but I’m not remembering now,” Gerald’s voice was fretful. “Then they fought the battle from here — from Tara — there was so much noise, people galloping up and stamping about. And later the cannon at Jonesboro — it sounded like thunder — even the girls could hear it, sick as they were, and they kept saying over and over: ‘Papa, make it stop thundering.’ ”

“And— and Mother? Did she know Yankees were in the house?”

“She— never knew anything.”

“Thank God,” said Scarlett. Mother was spared that. Mother never knew, never heard the enemy in the rooms below, never heard the guns at Jonesboro, never learned that the land which was part of her heart was under Yankee feet.

“I saw few of them for I stayed upstairs with the girls and your mother. I saw the young surgeon mostly. He was kind, so kind, Scarlett. After he’d worked all day with the wounded, he came and sat with them. He even left some medicine. He told me when they moved on that the girls would recover but your mother— She was so frail, he said — too frail to stand it all. He said she had undermined her strength. …”

In the silence that fell. Scarlett saw her mother as she must have been in those last days, a thin power of strength in Tara, nursing, working, doing without sleep and food that the others might rest and eat.

“And then, they moved on. Then, they moved on.”

He was silent for a long time and then fumbled at her hand.

“It’s glad I am you are home,” he said simply.

There was a scraping noise on the back porch. Poor Pork, trained for forty years to clean his shoes before entering the house, did not forget, even in a time like this. He came in, carefully carrying two gourds, and the strong smell of dripping spirits entered before him.

“Ah spilt a plen’y, Miss Scarlett. It’s pow’ful hard ter po’ outer a bung hole inter a go’de.”

“That’s quite all right, Pork, and thank you.” She took the wet gourd dipper from him, her nostrils wrinkling in distaste at the reek.

“Drink this, Father,” she said, pushing the whisky in its strange receptacle into his hand and taking the second gourd of water from Pork. Gerald raised it, obedient as a child, and gulped noisily. She handed the water to him but he shook his head.

As she took the whisky from him and held it to her mouth, she saw his eyes follow her, a vague stirring of disapproval in them.

“I know no lady drinks spirits,” she said briefly. “But today I’m no lady, Pa, and there is work to do tonight.”

She tilted the dipper, drew a deep breath and drank swiftly. The hot liquid burned down her throat to her stomach, choking her and bringing tears to her eyes. She drew another breath and raised it again.

“Katie Scarlett,” said Gerald, the first note of authority she had heard in his voice since her return, “that is enough. You’re not knowing spirits and they will be making you tipsy.”

“Tipsy?” She laughed an ugly laugh. “Tipsy? I hope it makes me drunk. I would like to be drunk and forget all of this.”

She drank again, a slow train of warmth lighting in her veins and stealing through her body until even her finger tips tingled. What a blessed feeling, this kindly fire. It seemed to penetrate even her ice-locked heart and strength came coursing back into her body.’ Seeing Gerald’s puzzled hurt face, she patted his knee again and managed an imitation of the pert smile he used to love.

“How could it make me tipsy, Pa? I’m your daughter. Haven’t I inherited the steadiest head in Clayton County?”

He almost smiled into her tired face. The whisky was bracing him too. She handed it back to him.

“Now you’re going to take another drink and then I am going to take you upstairs and put you to bed.”

She caught herself. Why, this was the way she talked to Wade— she should not address her father like this. It was disrespectful. But he hung on her words.

“Yes, put you to bed,” she added lightly, “and give you another drink— maybe all the dipper and make you go to sleep. You need sleep and Katie Scarlett is here, so you need not worry about anything. Drink.”

He drank again obediently and, slipping her arm through his, she pulled him to his feet

“Pork. …”

Pork took the gourd in one hand and Gerald’s arm in the other. Scarlett picked up the flaring candle and the three walked slowly into the dark hall and up the winding steps toward Gerald’s room.

The room where Suellen and Carreen lay mumbling and tossing on the same bed stank vilely with the smell of the twisted rag burning in a saucer of bacon fat, which provided the only light. When Scarlett first opened the door the thick atmosphere of the room, with all windows closed and the air reeking with sick-room odors, medicine smells and stinking grease, almost made her faint. Doctors might say that fresh air was fatal in a sick room but if she were to sit here, she must have air or die. She opened the three windows, bringing in the smell of oak leaves and earth, but the fresh air could do little toward dispelling the sickening odors which had accumulated for weeks in this close room.

Carreen and Suellen, emaciated and white, slept brokenly and awoke to mumble with wide, staring eyes in the tall four-poster bed where they had whispered together in better, happier days. In the corner of the room was an empty bed, a narrow French Empire bed with curling head and foot, a bed which Ellen had brought from Savannah. This was where Ellen had lain.

Scarlett sat beside the two girls, staring at them stupidly. The whisky taken on a stomach long empty was playing tricks on her. Sometimes her sisters seemed far away and tiny and their incoherent voices came to her like the buzz of insects. And again, they loomed large, rushing at her with lightning speed. She was tired, tired to the bone. She could lie down and sleep for days.

If she could only lie down and sleep and wake to feel Ellen gentry shaking her arm and saying: “It is late, Scarlett. You must not be so lazy.” But she could not ever do that again. If there were only Ellen, someone older than she, wiser and unweary, to whom she could go! Someone in whose lap she could lay her head, someone on whose shoulders she could rest her burdens!

The door opened softly and Dilcey entered, Melanie’s baby held to her breast, the gourd of whisky in her hand. In the smoky, uncertain light, she seemed thinner than when Scarlett last saw her and the Indian blood was more evident in her face. The high cheek bones were more prominent, the hawk-bridged nose was sharper and her copper skin gleamed with a brighter hue. Her faded calico dress was open to the waist and her large bronze breast exposed. Held close against her, Melanie’s baby pressed his pale rosebud mouth greedily to the dark nipple, sucking, gripping tiny fists against the soft flesh like a kitten in the warm fur of its mother’s belly.

Scarlett rose unsteadily and put a hand on Dilcey’s arm.

“It was good of you to stay, Dilcey.”

“How could I go off wid them trashy niggers, Miss Scarlett, after yo’ pa been so good to buy me and my little Prissy and yo’ ma been so kine?”

“Sit down, Dilcey. The baby can eat all right, then? And how is Miss Melanie?”

“Nuthin’ wrong wid this chile ‘cept he hongry, and what it take to feed a hongry chile I got. No’m, Miss Melanie is all right. She ain’ gwine die, Miss Scarlett. Doan you fret yo’seff. I seen too many, white and black, lak her. She mighty tired and nervous like and scared fo’ this baby. But I hesh her and give her some of whut was lef in that go’de and she sleepin’.”