"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 h
omes 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.