AS THE HOT noisy days of August were drawing to a close the bombardment abruptly ceased.
The quiet that fell on the town was startling. Neighbors met on the streets and stared at oneanother, uncertain, uneasy, as to what might be impending. The stillness, after the screaming days,brought no surcease to strained nerves but, if possible, made the strain even worse. No one knewwhy the Yankee batteries were silent; there was no news of the troops except that they had beenwithdrawn in large numbers from the breastworks about the town and had marched off toward thesouth to defend the railroad. No one knew where the fighting was, if indeed there was any fighting,or how the battle was going if there was a battle.
Nowadays the only news was that which passed from mouth to mouth. Short of paper, short ofink, short of men, the newspapers had suspended publication after the siege began, and the wildestrumors appeared from nowhere and swept through the town. Now, in the anxious quiet, crowdsstormed General Hood’s headquarters demanding information, crowds massed about the telegraphoffice and the depot hoping for tidings, good tidings, for everyone hoped that the silence ofSherman’s cannon meant that the Yankees were in full retreat and the Confederates chasing themback up the road to Dalton, But no news came. The telegraph wires were still, no trains came in onthe one remaining railroad from the south and the mail service was broken.
Autumn with its dusty, breathless heat was slipping in to choke the suddenly quiet town, addingits dry, panting weight to tired, anxious hearts. To Scarlett, mad to hear from Tara, yet trying tokeep up a brave face, it seemed an eternity since the siege began, seemed as though she had alwayslived with the sound of cannon in her ears until this sinister quiet had fallen. And yet, it was onlythirty days since the siege began. Thirty days of siege! The city ringed with red-clay rifle pits, themonotonous booming of cannon that never rested, the long lines of ambulances and ox cartsdripping blood down the dusty streets toward the hospitals, the overworked burial squads draggingout men when they were hardly cold and dumping them like so many logs in endless rows ofshallow ditches. Only thirty days
And it was only four months since the Yankees moved south from Dalton! Only four months
Scarlett thought, looking back on that far day, that it had occurred in another life. Oh, no! Surelynot just four months. It had been a lifetime.
Four months ago! Why, four months ago Dalton, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain had been to heronly names of places on the railroad. Now they were battles, battles desperately, vainly fought as Johnston fell back toward Atlanta. And now, Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church and UtoyCreek were no longer pleasant names of pleasant places. Never again could she think of them asquiet villages full of welcoming friends, as green places where she picnicked with handsomeofficers on the soft banks of slow-moving streams. These names meant battles too, and the softgreen grasses where she had sat were cut to bits by heavy cannon wheels, trampled by desperatefeet when bayonet met bayonet and flattened where bodies threshed in agonies. ... And the lazystreams were redder now than ever Georgia clay could make them. Peachtree Creek was crimson,so they said, after the Yankees crossed it. Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church, Utoy Creek.
Never names of places any more. Names of graves where friends lay buried, names of tangledunderbrush and thick woods where bodies rotted unburied, names of the four sides of Atlantawhere Sherman had tried to force his army in and Hood’s men had doggedly beaten him back.
At last, news came from the south to the strained town and it was alarming news, especially toScarlett. General Sherman was trying the fourth side of the town again, striking again at therailroad at Jonesboro. Yankees in large numbers were on that fourth side of the town now, noskirmishing units or cavalry detachments but the massed Yankee forces. And thousands ofConfederate troops had been withdrawn from the lines close about the city to hurl themselvesagainst them. And that explained the sudden silence.
Why Jonesboro?” thought Scarlett, terror striking at her heart at the thought of Tara’s nearness.
Why must they always hit Jonesboro? Why can’t they find some other place to attack therailroad
For a week she had not heard from Tara and the last brief note from Gerald had added to herfears. Carreen had taken a turn for the worse and was very, very sick. Now it might be days beforethe mails came through, days before she heard whether Carreen was alive or dead. Oh, if she hadonly gone home at the beginning of the siege, Melanie or no Melanie
There was fighting at Jonesboro—that much Atlanta knew, but how the battle went no one couldtell and the most insane rumors tortured the town. Finally a courier came up from Jonesboro withthe reassuring news that the Yankees had been beaten back. But they had made a sortie intoJonesboro, burned the depot, cut the telegraph wires and torn up three miles of track before theyretreated. The engineering corps was working like mad, repairing the line, but it would take sometime because the Yankees had torn up the crossties, made bonfires of them, laid the wrenched-uprails across them until they were red hot and then twisted them around telegraph poles until theylooked like giant corkscrews. These days it was so hard to replace iron rails, to replace anythingmade of iron.
No, the Yankees hadn’t gotten to Tara. The same courier who brought the dispatches to GeneralHood assured Scarlett of that He had met Gerald in Jonesboro after the battle, just as he wasstarting to Atlanta, and Gerald had begged him to bring a letter to her.
But what was Pa doing in Jonesboro? The young courier looked ill at ease as he made answer.
Gerald was hunting for an army doctor to go to Tara with him.
As she stood in the sunshine on the front porch, thanking the young man for his trouble, Scarlettfelt her knees go weak. Carreen must be dying if she was so far beyond Ellen’s medical skill thatGerald was hunting a doctor! As the courier went off in a small whirlwind of red dust, Scarlett tore open Gerald’s letter with fingers that trembled. So great was the shortage of paper in theConfederacy now that Gerald’s note was written between the lines of her last letter to him andreading it was difficult.
Dear Daughter, Your Mother and both girls have the typhoid. They are very ill but we musthope for the best. When your mother took to her bed she bade me write you that under nocondition were you to come home and expose yourself and Wade to the disease. She sends her loveand bids you pray for her.
Pray for her!” Scarlett flew up the stairs to her room and, dropping on her knees by the bed,prayed as she had never prayed before. No formal Rosaries now but the same words over and over
Mother of God, don’t let her die! I’ll be so good if you don’t let her die! Please, don’t let her die
For the next week Scarlett crept about the house like a stricken animal, waiting for news,starting at every sound of horses’ hooves, rushing down the dark stair at night when soldiers cametapping at the door, but no news came from Tara. The width of the continent might have spreadbetween her and home instead of twenty-five miles of dusty road.
The mails were still disrupted, no one knew where the Confederates were or what the Yankeeswere up to. No one knew anything except that thousands; of soldiers, gray and blue, weresomewhere between Atlanta and Jonesboro. Not a word from Tara in a week.
Scarlett had seen enough typhoid in the Atlanta hospital to know what a week meant in thatdread disease. Ellen was ill, perhaps dying, and here was Scarlett helpless in Atlanta with apregnant woman on her hands and two armies between her and home. Ellen was ill—perhapsdying. But Ellen couldn’t be ill! She had never been ill. The very thought was incredible and itstruck at the very foundations of the security of Scarlett’s life. Everyone else got sick, but neverEllen. Ellen looked after sick people and made them well again. She couldn’t be sick. Scarlettwanted to be home. She wanted Tara with the desperate desire of a frightened child frantic for theonly haven it had ever known.
Home! The sprawling white house with fluttering white curtains at the windows, the thick cloveron the lawn with the bees busy in it, the little black boy on the front steps shooing the ducks andturkeys from the flower beds, the serene red fields and the miles and miles of cotton turning whitein the sun! Home
If she had only gone home at the beginning of the siege, when everyone else was refugeeing
She could have taken Melanie with her in safety with weeks to spare.
Oh, damn Melanie!” she thought a thousand times. “Why couldn’t she have gone to Maconwith Aunt Pitty? That’s where she belongs, with her own kinfolks, not with me. I’m none of herblood. Why does she hang onto me so hard? If she’d only gone to Macon, then I could have gonehome to Mother. Even now—even now, I’d take a chance on getting home in spite of the Yankees,if it wasn’t for this baby. Maybe General Hood would give me an escort. He’s a nice man, GeneralHood, and I know I could make him give me an escort and a flag of truce to get me through thelines. But I have to wait for this baby! ... Oh, Mother! Mother! Don’t die! ... Why don’t this babyever come? I’ll see Dr. Meade today and ask him if there’s any way to hurry babies up so I can gohome—if I can get an escort. Dr. Meade said she’d have a bad time. Dear God! Suppose she should die! Melanie dead. Melanie dead. And Ashley— No, I mustn’t think about that, it isn’t nice.
But Ashley— No, I mustn’t think about that because he’s probably dead, anyway. But he made mepromise I’d take care of her. But—if I didn’t take care of her and she died and Ashley is still alive— No, I mustn’t think about ‘that It’s sinful. And I promised God I’d be good if He would just notlet Mother die. Oh, if the baby would only come. If I could only get away from here—get home—get anywhere but here.
Scarlett hated the sight of the ominously still town now and once she had loved it. Atlanta wasno longer the gay, the desperately gay place she had loved. It was a hideous place like a plague-stricken city so quiet, so dreadfully quiet after the din of the siege. There had been stimulation inthe noise and the danger of the shelling. There was only horror in the quiet that followed. The townseemed haunted, haunted with fear and uncertainty and memories. People’s faces looked pinchedand the few soldiers Scarlett saw wore the exhausted look of racers forcing themselves on throughthe last lap of a race already lost.
The last day of August came and with it convincing rumors that the fiercest fighting since thebattle of Atlanta was taking place. Somewhere to the south. Atlanta, waiting for news of the turn ofbattle, stopped even trying to laugh and joke. Everyone knew now what the soldiers had knowntwo weeks before—that Atlanta was in the last ditch, that if the Macon railroad fell, Atlanta wouldfall too.
On the morning of the first of September, Scarlett awoke with a suffocating sense of dread uponher, a dread she had taken to her pillow the night before. She thought, dulled with sleep: “Whatwas it I was worrying about when I went to bed last night? Oh, yes, the fighting. There was abattle, somewhere, yesterday! Oh, who won?” She sat up hastily, rubbing her eyes, and her worriedheart took up yesterday’s load again.
The air was oppressive even in the early morning hour, hot with the scorching promise of a noonof glaring blue sky and pitiless bronze sun. The road outside lay silent No wagons creaked by. Notroops raised the red dust with their tramping feet. There were no sounds of negroes’ lazy voices inneighboring kitchens, no pleasant sounds of breakfasts being prepared, for all the near neighborsexcept Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Merriwether had refugeed to Macon. And she could hear nothingfrom their houses either. Farther down the street the business section was quiet and many of thestores and offices were locked and boarded up, while their occupants were somewhere about thecountryside with rifles in their hands.
The stillness that greeted her seemed even more sinister this morning than on any of themornings of the queer quiet week preceding it. She rose hastily, without her usual preliminaryburrowings and stretchings, and went to the window, hoping to see some neighbor’s face, someheartening sight. But the road was empty. She noted how the leaves on the trees were still darkgreen but dry and heavily coated with red dust, and how withered and sad the untended flowers inthe front yard looked.
As she stood, looking out of the window, there came to her ears a far-off sound, faint and sullenas the first distant thunder of an approaching storm.
Rain,” she thought in the first moment, and her country-bred mind added, “we certainly needit.” But, in a split instant: “Rain? No! Not rain! Cannon
Her heart racing, she leaned from the window, her ear cocked to the far-off roaring, trying todiscover from which direction it came. But the dim thundering was so distant that, for a moment,she could not tell. “Make it from Marietta, Lord!” she prayed. “Or Decatur. Or Peachtree Creek.
But not from the south! Not from the south!” She gripped the window still tighter and strained herears and the far-away booming seemed louder. And it was coming from the south.
Cannon to the south! And to the south lay Jonesboro and Tara—and Ellen.
Yankees perhaps at Tara, now, this minute! She listened again but the blood thudding in her earsall but blurred out the sound of far-off firing. No, they couldn’t be at Jonesboro yet. If they werethat far away, the sound would be fainter, more indistinct. But they must be at least ten miles downthe road toward Jonesboro, probably near the little settlement of Rough and Ready. But Jonesborowas scarcely more than ten miles below Rough and Ready.
Cannon to the south, and they might be tolling the knell of Atlanta’s fall. But to Scarlett, sick forher mother’s safety, fighting to the south only meant fighting near Tara. She walked the floor andwrung her hands and for the first time the thought in all its implications came to her that the grayarmy might be defeated. It was the thought of Sherman’s thousands so close to Tara that brought itall home to her, brought the full horror of the war to her as no sound of siege guns shatteringwindowpanes, no privations of food and clothing and no endless rows of dying men had done.
Sherman’s army within a few miles of Tara! And even if the Yankees should be defeated, theymight fall back down the road to Tara. And Gerald couldn’t possibly refugee out of their way withthree sick women.
Oh, if she were only there now, Yankees or not She paced the floor in her bare feet, hernightgown clinging to her legs and the more she walked the stronger became her foreboding. Shewanted to be at home. She wanted to be near Ellen.
From the kitchen below, she heard the rattle of china as Prissy prepared breakfast, but no soundof Mrs. Meade’s Betsy. The shrill, melancholy minor of Prissy was raised, “Jes’ a few mo’ days, tertote de wee-ry load ...” The song grated on Scarlett, its sad implications frightening her, andslipping on a wrapper she pattered out into the hall and to the back stairs and shouted: “Shut upthat singing, Prissy
A sullen “Yas’m” drifted up to her and she drew a deep breath, feeling suddenly ashamed ofherself.
Where’s Betsy
Ah doan know. She ain’ came.
Scarlett walked to Melanie’s door and opened it a crack, peering into the sunny room. Melanielay in bed in her nightgown, her eyes closed and circled with black, her heart-shaped face bloated,her slender body hideous and distorted. Scarlett wished viciously that Ashley could see her now.
She looked worse than any pregnant woman she had ever seen. As she looked, Melanie’s eyesopened and a soft warm smile lit her face.
Come in,” she invited, turning awkwardly on her side. “I’ve been awake since sun-up thinking,and, Scarlett, there’s something I want to ask you.
She entered the room and sat down on the bed that was glaring with harsh sunshine.
Melanie reached out and took Scarlett’s hand in a gentle confiding clasp.
Dear,” she said, “I’m sorry about the cannon. It’s toward Jonesboro, isn’t it
Scarlett said “Um,” her heart beginning to beat faster as the thought recurred.
I know how worried you are. I know you’d have gone home last week when you heard aboutyour mother, if it hadn’t been for me. Wouldn’t you
Yes,” said Scarlett ungraciously.
Scarlett, darling. You’ve been so good to me. No sister could have been sweeter or braver. AndI love you for it. I’m so sorry I’m in the way.
Scarlett stared. Loved her, did she? The fool
And Scarlett, I’ve been lying here thinking and I want to ask a very great favor of you.” Herclasp tightened. “If I should die, will you take my baby
Melanie’s eyes were wide and bright with soft urgency.
Will you
Scarlett jerked away her hand as fear swamped her. Fear roughened her voice as she spoke.
Oh, don’t be a goose, Melly. You aren’t going to die. Every woman thinks she’s going to diewith her first baby. I know I did.
No, you didn’t You’ve never been afraid of anything. You are just saying that to try to cheer meup. I’m not afraid to die but I’m so afraid to leave the baby, if Ashley is— Scarlett, promise methat you’ll take my baby if I should die. Then I won’t be afraid. Aunt Pittypat is too old to raise achild and Honey and India are sweet but—I want you to have my baby. Promise me, Scarlett Andif it’s a boy, bring him up like Ashley, and if it’s a girl—dear, I’d like her to be like you.
God’s nightgown!” cried Scarlett, leaping from the bed. “Aren’t things bad enough without youtalking about dying
I’m sorry, dear. But promise me. I think it’ll be today. I’m sure it’ll be today. Please promiseme.
Oh, all right, I promise,” said Scarlett, looking down at her in bewilderment.
Was Melanie such a fool she really didn’t know how she cared for Ashley? Or did she knoweverything and feel that because of that love, Scarlett would take good care of Ashley’s child
Scarlett had a wild impulse to cry out questions, but they died on her lips as Melanie took her handand held it for an instant against her cheek. Tranquility had come back into her eyes.
Why do you think it will be today, Melly
I’ve been having pains since dawn—but not very bad ones.
You have? Well, why didn’t you call me? I’ll send Prissy for Dr. Meade.
No, don’t do that yet, Scarlett. You know how busy he is, how busy they all are. Just send wordto him that we’ll need him some time today. Send over to Mrs. Meade’s and tell her and ask her tocome over and sit with me. She’ll know when to really send for him.
Oh, stop being so unselfish. You know you need a doctor as much as anybody in the hospital.
I’ll send for him right away.
No, please don’t. Sometimes it takes all day having a baby and I just couldn’t let the doctor sithere for hours when all those poor boys need him so much. Just send for Mrs. Meade. She’llknow.
Oh, all right,” said Scarlett.