Gone With the Wind, Page 52

  She had privately gone through Gerald's pockets and his cash box and all she could find was stacks of Confederate bonds and three thousand dollars in Confederate bills. That was about enough to buy one square meal for them all, she thought ironically, now that Confederate money was worth almost less than nothing at all. But if she did have money and could find food, how would she haul it home to Tara? Why had God let the old horse die? Even that sorry animal Rhett had stolen would make all the difference in the world to them. Oh, those fine sleek mules which used to kick up their heels in the pasture across the road, and the handsome carriage horses, her little mare, the girls' ponies and Gerald's big stallion racing about and tearing up the turf -- Oh, for one of them, even the balkiest mule!

  But, no matter -- when her foot healed she would walk to Jonesboro. It would be the longest walk she had ever taken in her life, but walk it she would. Even if the Yankees had burned the town completely, she would certainly find someone in the neighborhood who could tell her where to get food. Wade's pinched face rose up before her eyes. He didn't like yams, he repeated; wanted a drumstick and some rice and gravy.

  The bright sunlight in the front yard suddenly clouded and the trees blurred through tears. Scarlett dropped her head on her arms and struggled not to cry. Crying was so useless now. The only time crying ever did any good was when there was a man around from whom you wished favors. As she crouched there, squeezing her eyes tightly to keep back the tears, she was startled by the sound of trotting hooves. But she did not raise her head. She had imagined that sound too often in the nights and days of these last two weeks, just as she had imagined she heard the rustle of Ellen's skirts. Her heart hammered, as it always did at such moments, before she told herself sternly: "Don't be a fool."

  But the hooves slowed down in a startlingly natural way to the rhythm of a walk and there was the measured scrunch-scrunch on the gravel. It was a horse -- the Tarletons, the Fontaines! She looked up quickly. It was a Yankee cavalryman.

  Automatically, she dodged behind the curtain and peered fascinated at him through the dim folds of the cloth, so startled that the breath went out of her lungs with a gasp.

  He sat slouched in the saddle, a thick, rough-looking man with an unkempt black beard straggling over his unbuttoned brae jacket. Little close-set eyes, squinting in the sun glare, calmly surveyed the house from beneath the visor of his tight brae cap. As he slowly dismounted and tossed the bridle reins over the hitching post, Scarlett's breath came back to her as suddenly and painfully as after a blow in the stomach. A Yankee, a Yankee with a long pistol on his hip! And she was alone in the house with three sick girls and the babies!

  As he lounged up the walk, hand on holster, beady little eyes glancing to right and left, a kaleidoscope of jumbled pictures spun in her mind, stories Aunt Pittypat had whispered of attacks on unprotected women, throat cuttings, houses burned over the heads of dying women, children bayoneted because they cried, all of the unspeakable horrors that lay bound up in the name of "Yankee."

  Her first terrified impulse was to hide in the closet, crawl under the bed, fly down the back stairs and run screaming to the swamp, anything to escape him. Then she heard his cautious feet on the front steps and his stealthy tread as he entered the hall and she knew that escape was cut off. Too cold with fear to move, she heard his progress from room to room downstairs, his steps growing louder and bolder as he discovered no one. Now he was in the dining room and in a moment he would walk out into the kitchen.

  At the thought of the kitchen, rage suddenly leaped up in Scarlett's breast, so sharply that it jabbed at her heart like a knife thrust, and fear fell away before her overpowering fury. The kitchen! There, over the open kitchen fire were two pots, one filled with apples stewing and the other with a hodgepodge of vegetables brought painfully from Twelve Oaks and the Macintosh garden -- dinner that must serve for nine hungry people and hardly enough for two. Scarlett had been restraining her appetite for hours, waiting for the return of the others and the thought of the Yankee eating their meager meal made her shake with anger.

  God damn them all! They descended like locusts and left Tara to starve slowly and now they were back again to steal the poor leavings. Her empty stomach writhed within her. By God, this was one Yankee who would do no more stealing!

  She slipped off her worn shoe and, barefooted, she pattered swiftly to the bureau, not even feeling her festered toe. She opened the top drawer soundlessly and caught up the heavy pistol she had brought from Atlanta, the weapon Charles had worn but never fired. She fumbled in the leather box that hung on the wall below his saber and brought out a cap. She slipped it into place with a hand that did not shake. Quickly and noiselessly, she ran into the upper hall and down the stairs, steadying herself on the banisters with one hand and holding the pistol close to her thigh in the folds of her skirt.

  "Who's there?" cried a nasal voice and she stopped on the middle of the stairs, the blood thudding in her ears so loudly she could hardly hear him. "Halt or I'll shoot!" came the voice.

  He stood in the door of the dining room, crouched tensely, his pistol in one hand and, in the other, the small rosewood sewing box fitted with gold thimble, gold-handled scissors and tiny gold-topped acorn of emery. Scarlett's legs felt cold to the knees but rage scorched her face. Ellen's sewing box in his hands. She wanted to cry: "Put it down! Put it down, you dirty --" but words would not come. She could only stare over the banisters at him and watch his face change from harsh tenseness to a half-contemptuous, half-ingratiating smile.

  "So there is somebody at home," he said, slipping his pistol back into its holster and moving into the hall until he stood directly below her. "All alone, little lady?"

  Like lightning, she shoved her weapon over the banisters and into the startled bearded face. Before he could even fumble at his belt, she pulled the trigger. The back kick of the pistol made her reel, as the roar of the explosion filled her ears and the acrid smoke stung her nostrils. The man crashed backwards to the floor, sprawling into the dining room with a violence that shook the furniture. The box clattered from his hand, the contents spilling about him. Hardly aware that she was moving, Scarlett ran down the stairs and stood over him, gazing down into what was left of the face above the beard, a bloody pit where the nose had been, glazing eyes burned with powder. As she looked, two streams of blood crept across the shining floor, one from his face and one from the back of his head.

  Yes, he was dead. Undoubtedly. She had killed a man.

  The smoke curled slowly to the ceiling and the red streams widened about her feet. For a timeless moment she stood there and in the still hot hush of the summer morning every irrelevant sound and scent seemed magnified, the quick thudding of her heart, like, a drumbeat, the slight rough rustling of the magnolia leaves, the far-off plaintive sound of a swamp bird and the sweet smell of the flowers outside the window.

  She had killed a man, she who took care never to be in at the kill on a hunt, she who could not bear the squealing of a hog at slaughter or the squeak of a rabbit in a snare. Murder! she thought dully. I've done murder. Oh, this can't be happening to me! Her eyes went to the stubby hairy hand on the floor so close to the sewing box and suddenly she was vitally alive again, vitally glad with a cool tigerish joy. She could have ground her heel into the gaping wound which had been his nose and taken sweet pleasure in the feel of his warm blood on her bare feet. She had struck a blow of revenge for Tara -- and for Ellen.

  There were hurried stumbling steps in the upper hall, a pause and then more steps, weak dragging steps now, punctuated by metallic clankings. A sense of time and reality coming back to her, Scarlett looked up and saw Melanie at the top of the stairs, clad only in the ragged chemise which served her as a nightgown, her weak arm weighed down with Charles' saber. Melanie's eyes took in the scene below in its entirety, the sprawling blue-clad body in the red pool, the sewing box beside him, Scarlett, barefooted and gray-faced, clutching the long pistol.

  In silence her eyes m
et Scarlett's. There was a glow of grim pride in her usually gentle face, approbation and a fierce joy in her smile that equaled the fiery tumult in Scarlett's own bosom.

  "Why -- why -- she's like me! She understands how I feel!" thought Scarlett in that long moment "She'd have done the same thing!"

  With a thrill she looked up at the frail swaying girl for whom she had never had any feelings but of dislike and contempt. Now, straggling against hatred for Ashley's wife, there surged a feeling of admiration and comradeship. She saw in a flash of clarity untouched by any petty emotion that beneath the gentle voice and the dovelike eyes of Melanie there was a thin flashing blade of unbreakable steel, felt too that there were banners and bugles of courage in Melanie's quiet blood.

  "Scarlett! Scarlett!" shrilled the weak frightened voices of Suellen and Carreen, muffled by their closed door, and Wade's voice screamed "Auntee! Auntee!" Swiftly Melanie put her finger to her lips and, laying the sword on the top step, she painfully made her way down the upstairs hall and opened the door of the sick room.

  "Don't be scared, chickens!" came her voice with teasing gaiety. "Your big sister was trying to clean the rust off Charles' pistol and it went off and nearly scared her to death!" ... "Now, Wade Hampton, Mama just shot off your dear Papa's pistol! When you are bigger, she will let you shoot it."

  "What a cool liar!" thought Scarlett with admiration. "I couldn't have thought that quickly. But why lie? They've got to know I've done it."

  She looked down at the body again and now revulsion came over her as her rage and fright melted away, and her knees began to quiver with the reaction. Melanie dragged herself to the top step again and started down, holding onto the banisters, her pale lower lip caught between her teeth.

  "Go back to bed, silly, you'll kill yourself!" Scarlett cried, but the half-naked Melanie made her painful way down into the lower hall.

  "Scarlett," she whispered, "we must get him out of here and bury him. He may not be alone and if they find him here --" She steadied herself on Scarlett's arm.

  "He must be alone," said Scarlett. "I didn't see anyone else from the upstairs window. He must be a deserter."

  "Even if he is alone, no one must know about it. The negroes might talk and then they'd come and get you. Scarlett, we must get him hidden before the folks come back from the swamp."

  Her mind prodded to action by the feverish urgency of Melanie's voice, Scarlett thought hard.

  "I could bury him in the corner of the garden under the arbor -- the ground is soft there where Pork dug up the whisky barrel. But how will I get him there?"

  "We'll both take a leg and drag him," said Melanie firmly.

  Reluctantly, Scarlett's admiration went still higher.

  "You couldn't drag a cat. I'll drag him," she said roughly. "You go back to bed. You'll kill yourself. Don't dare try to help me either or I'll carry you upstairs myself."

  Melanie's white face broke into a sweet understanding smile. "You are very dear, Scarlett," she said and softly brushed her lips against Scarlett's cheek. Before Scarlett could recover from her surprise, Melanie went on: "If you can drag him out, I'll mop up the -- the mess before the folks get home, and Scarlett --"

  "Yes?"

  "Do you suppose it would be dishonest to go through his knapsack? He might have something to eat."

  "I do not," said Scarlett, annoyed that she had not thought of this herself. "You take the knapsack and I'll go through his pockets."

  Stooping over the dead man with distaste, she unbuttoned the remaining buttons of his jacket and systematically began rifling his pockets.

  "Dear God," she whispered, pulling out a bulging wallet, wrapped about with a rag. "Melanie -- Melly, I think it's full of money!"

  Melanie said nothing but abruptly sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall.

  "You look," she said shakily. I'm feeling a little weak."

  Scarlett tore off the rag and with trembling hands opened the leather folds.

  "Look, Melly -- just look!"

  Melanie looked and her eyes dilated. Jumbled together was a mass of bills, United States greenbacks mingling with Confederate money and, glinting from between them, were one ten-dollar gold piece and two five-dollar gold pieces.

  "Don't stop to count it now," said Melanie as Scarlett began fingering the bills. "We haven't time --"

  "Do you realize, Melanie, that this money means that we'll eat?"

  "Yes, yes, dear. I know but we haven't time now. You look in his other pockets and I'll take the knapsack."

  Scarlett was loath to put down the wallet. Bright vistas opened before her -- real money, the Yankee's horse, food! There was a God after all, and He did provide, even if He did take very odd ways of providing. She sat on her haunches and stared at the wallet smiling. Food! Melanie plucked it from her hands --

  "Hurry!" she said.

  The trouser pockets yielded nothing except a candle end, a jackknife, a plug of tobacco and a bit of twine. Melanie removed from the knapsack a small package of coffee which she sniffed as if it were the sweetest of perfumes, hardtack and, her face changing, a miniature of a little girl in a gold frame set with seed pearls, a garnet brooch, two broad gold bracelets with tiny dangling gold chains, a gold thimble, a small silver baby's cup, gold embroidery scissors, a diamond solitaire ring and a pair of earrings with pendant pear-shaped diamonds, which even their unpracticed eyes could tell were well over a carat each.

  "A thief!" whispered Melanie, recoiling from the still body. "Scarlett, he must have stolen all of this!"

  "Of course," said Scarlett. "And he came here hoping to steal more from us."

  "I'm glad you killed him," said Melanie her gentle eyes hard. "Now hurry, darling, and get him out of here."

  Scarlett bent over, caught the dead man by his boots and tugged. How heavy he was and how weak she suddenly felt. Suppose she shouldn't be able to move him? Turning so that she backed the corpse, she caught a heavy boot under each arm and threw her weight forward. He moved and she jerked again. Her sore foot, forgotten in the excitement, now gave a tremendous throb that made her grit her teeth and shift her weight to the heel. Tugging and straining, perspiration dripping from her forehead, she dragged him down the hall, a red stain following her path.

  "If he bleeds across the yard, we can't hide it," she gasped. "Give me your shimmy, Melanie, and I'll wad it around his head."

  Melanie's white face went crimson.

  "Don't be silly, I won't look at you," said Scarlett "If I had on a petticoat or pantalets I'd use them."

  Crouching back against the wall, Melanie pulled the ragged linen garment over her head and silently tossed it to Scarlett, shielding herself as best she could with her arms.

  "Thank God, I'm not that modest," thought Scarlett, feeling rather than seeing Melanie's agony of embarrassment, as she wrapped the ragged cloth about the shattered face.

  By a series of limping jerks, she pulled the body down the hall toward the back porch and, pausing to wipe her forehead with the back of her hand, glanced back toward Melanie, sitting against the wall hugging her thin knees to her bare breasts. How silly of Melanie to be bothering about modesty at a time like this, Scarlett thought irritably. It was just part of her nicey-nice way of acting which had always made Scarlett despise her. Then shame rose in her. After all -- after all, Melanie had dragged herself from bed so soon after having a baby and had come to her aid with a weapon too heavy even for her to lift. That had taken courage, the kind of courage Scarlett honestly knew she herself did not possess, the thin-steel, spun silk courage which had characterized Melanie on the terrible night Atlanta fell and on the long trip home. It was the same intangible, unspectacular courage that all the Wilkeses possessed, a quality which Scarlett did not understand but to which she gave grudging tribute.

  "Go back to bed," she threw over her shoulder. "You'll be dead if you don't. I'll clean up the mess after I've buried him."

  "I'll do it with one of the rag rugs," whispered Melan
ie, looking at the pool of blood with a sick face.

  "Well, kill yourself then and see if I care! And if any of the folks come back before I'm finished, keep them in the house and tell them the horse just walked in from nowhere."

  Melanie sat shivering in the morning sunlight and covered her ears against the sickening series of thuds as the dead man's head bumped down the porch steps.

  No one questioned whence the horse had come. It was so obvious he was a stray from the recent battle and they were well pleased to have him. The Yankee lay in the shallow pit Scarlett had scraped out under the scuppernong arbor. The uprights which held the thick vines were rotten and that night Scarlett hacked at them with the kitchen knife until they fell and the tangled mass ran wild over the grave. The replacing of these posts was one bit of repair work Scarlett did not suggest and, if the negroes knew why, they kept their silence.

  No ghost rose from that shallow grave to haunt her in the long nights when she lay awake, too tired to sleep. No feeling of horror or remorse assailed her at the memory. She wondered why, knowing that even a month before she could never have done the deed. Pretty young Mrs. Hamilton, with her dimple and her jingling earbobs and her helpless little ways, blowing a man's face to a pulp and then burying him in a hastily scratched-out hole! Scarlett grinned a little grimly thinking of die consternation such an idea would bring to those who knew her.

  "I won't think about it any more," she decided. "It's over and done with and I'd have been a ninny not to kill him. I reckon -- I reckon I must have changed a little since coming home or else I couldn't have done it."

  She did not think of it consciously but in the back of her mind, whenever she was confronted by an unpleasant and difficult task, the idea lurked giving her strength: I've done murder and so I can surely do this."