The bright glare of morning sunlight streaming through the trees overhead awakened Scarlett. For a moment, stiffened by the cramped position in which she had slept, she could not remember where she was. The sun blinded her, the hard boards of the wagon under her were harsh against her body, and a heavy weight lay across her legs. She tried to sit up and discovered that the weight was Wade who lay sleeping with his head pillowed on her knees. Melanie's bare feet were almost in her face and, under the wagon seat, Prissy was curled up like a black cat with the small baby wedged in between her and Wade.
Then she remembered everything. She popped up to a sitting position and looked hastily all around. Thank God, no Yankees in sight! Their hiding place had not been discovered in the night. It all came back to her now, the nightmare journey after Rhett's footsteps died away, the endless night, the black road full of ruts and boulders along which they jolted, the deep gullies on either side into which the wagon slipped, the fear-crazed strength with which she and Prissy had pushed the wheels out of the gullies. She recalled with a shudder how often she had driven the unwilling horse into fields and woods when she heard soldiers approaching, not knowing if they were friends or foes — recalled, too, her anguish lest a cough, a sneeze or Wade's hiccoughing might betray them to the marching men.
But they were not seen, and the horse, being not so much of an animal, as Rhett foresaw, had refused to move from a certain point forcing her to unsaddle him and take that rest at the break of dawn. She jumped off and started saddling the animal –
"Prissy, help me out" she said in a low voice, dreading to be heard.
Prissy opened her frightened eyes and quick enough reached for the animal's neck.
"You saddle like one of the stallion boys" admired Scarlett inattentively;
"Momma she'd kills me every time she done find me next to the hose's place in old man Wilkse's farm. So would Miss India. It's no good for a house negro girl to know this. But I juss can't help love'em."
"Surely Miss India did not hit you" uttered Scarlett with clear shock.
"Oh, why yes, Miss Scarlett, with a whip an' awll. Thas why I'm so happy to leave with Mama to Tara, de only plantation where no one gets licken in the County. I done think that was why Momma would hit me, so that Miss Wilkes wouldn't start with her whip and cane and shouting an all".
Scarlett listened and thought how different for that girl, to be deprived of something her father encouraged her. To be physically brutalized on account of her fondness of horses. The pale eyes of India Wilkes came to her mind. Oh, the malice in that girl, her peer. The self-righteousness that she hated. Yes, she is happy that she stole Stu Tarleton from her for a year or so. Suit her fine.
"I never liked India" muttered Scarlett "I just didn't figure she was so mean with her darkies."
"Oh, Miss Scarlett, don't tell Momma I done said something, it aint proper to discuss other mansions affairs even if it is your new mansion now, Ma Momma won't be pleases" uttered the girl with sudden self-awareness.
"Not to worry Prissy, not to worry".
The baby was on Prissy's lap. He was weeping in a loud voice that was in total contrast to his weak silent mother.
"Prissy – why you always could calm Wade down" Scarlett said with despair. They had to be quiet. It was imperative that no solider, Yankee or Confederate would hear them.
"Wade aint never beens hungry as dis bot Miss" retorted Prissy with equal despair.
To no other resort, Scarlett unbuttoned her dress and tried to sooth him with her breast.
"Do you have any, Maam?" asked Prissy
"I am not sure. It's been a few months since Wade ceased with breast feeding, we must hurry though, however calmer he is now it won't last long".
The girl and the young woman sighed as the baby seemed to relax.
An hour or so later to mid noon, Melanie awoke – "My baby?"
"There Melly, we are close to Tara, he is as strong as a young pony, and his appetite is fine, my, just wait till Ma can hold him. It is just across this road and then past the river" answered Scarlett
"Appetite?" She asked with wonder
"Oh well, I fed him, I suppose I don't have much left, but in the first few days they hardly suck, and I still haven't dried completely" embarrassed from doing what is expected for one's own child only, or for a darkie wet nurse, she lowered her voice and mumbled the last few words to no avail.
"I knew that you would have him as your own. No sister could have been kinder and so selfless my dear" the kind words soothed Scarlett's unease.
All of a sudden, a loud voice came from the bushes at the side of the road. Startled she stopped and aimed with the pistol Rhett gave her. Seconds afterwards the air resolved from her lunges. It was a cow.
"Prissy, that is exactly what we need. Come, tie her with your petticoat or something to the wagon" Said Scarlett with an awe at the animal.
"I ain't got no petticoat Miss Scarlett, and I is scared of cows." Answered the girl.
"Oh, they are less wild than horses, come, I will give you my petticoat."
With despair and fury, she tore her petticoat, the last piece of garment associated with vanity she had once took pride of.
The sun started setting in the west as the road curves finally reached the highest hill and there it stood, The white house with its six columns.
But in the house she found nothing but mourn. Her mother dead, her sisters sick of typhoid, and a father struck by grief.
Scarlett's thoughts were as incoherent as a storm. She asked herself if God was punishing her for last night, and it was the first time that she let herself think of her yielding to Rhett's desire, but as the thought passed in her head she dismissed it thinking 'he is probably going to die as well if he had not died just yet, no, if God is playing a trick at me it is probably because of something else' the realization that her saint mother is dead mad her think that whatever grand plan was in Gods agenda she had no way of understanding or even caring. She felt as if the world has shuttered into a million pieces. If it was wrong for her to give herself to a man she had not wed she did not care. Nothing was right. All her friends dead in battle. Atlanta burning down, Melanie nearly dying at birth and no doctor to come, herself watching amputations of soldiers, smelling death and watching naked bodies of men so bruised that one could hardly imagine them as the South's Glorious Knights, and at the end of it fleeing from the burning city, Rhett, telling her he loved her and desired her just as he left to fight a battle he knew was lost even before it had begun. All those were far more wrong than her complying to him last night.
No, it was not her fault. If any, it was someone else's fault inflicting so much pain. Falling in love with Ashly just to lose him to another woman he chose to marry. Loving Rhett, the night he left her. Loving? No, it surely wasn't love to be precise. It must have been something else. But the sound of the bombs that still echoed in her mind and the picture of that big impish man she had just given herself to had left her there out in the road with this an unbearable growing pain.
'So be it, whether I love you or not, you never asked for my hand, and you left to this Godforsaken war. No, I shall not dwell on it now. It will drive me insane if I do. I shall think of it tomorrow.'
Dilcey took the little baby and assured that she can nurse him with her new born son. As she turned with Melanie's child Scarlett thanked her and added "Prissy was a great help on the road, she is a good girl Dilcey"
Dilcey's eyes brightened, "I thanked you once for convincing your father to buy her, I thank you again Miss. "
Her breasts were swollen and sore, her feet bruised and her head pounding. Dilcey saw her discomfort and handed her a wet cloth with some cabbage leaves pressed in it –"There, no need for you to be feeding him, that'l dry'em allra foe ya".
She pressed the cloth, not bothering to hide her bosom from any prying eyes, Dilcey did not move her gaze and Mammy turned her eyes with evident embarrassment muttering words that Scarlett did not bother hearing but "propriety and Yankees" she heard. 'I won't think about it now', she thought, though suddenly anger rose from beneath the depths of her fatigue, what was she supposed to do? Let the baby starve? No, she has done what she had to do. Rhett's face came to mind again. His grin, his warm hands over her body, roaming, caressing, 'that is something that may be a much better a topic for propriety discussions' she thought and her forehead eased much to her surprise. No she had no remorse in her for that. It was hers to give. Mother was dead, but Melanie was alive. And Rhett? She shoved that thought far and quickly away. She cannot thing of that now. She drank the old whiskey at her father's counter.
Then she discovered she was in her own room, on her own bed, faint moonlight pricking the darkness, and Mammy and Dilcey were undressing her. The torturing stays no longer pinched her waist and she could breathe deeply and quietly to the bottom of her lungs and her abdomen. She felt her stockings being stripped gently from her and heard Mammy murmuring indistinguishable comforting sounds as she bathed her blistered feet. How cool the water was, how good to lie here in softness, like a child. She sighed and relaxed and after a time which might have been a year or a second, she was alone and the room was brighter as the rays of the moon streamed in across the bed.
She did not know she was drunk, drunk with fatigue and whisky. She only knew she had left her tired body and floated somewhere above it where there was no pain and weariness and her brain saw things with an inhuman clarity.
She was seeing things with new eyes for, somewhere along the long road to Tara, she had left her girlhood behind her. She was no longer plastic clay, yielding imprint to each new experience. The clay had hardened, some time in this indeterminate day which had lasted a thousand years. Tonight was the last time she would ever be ministered to as a child. She was a woman now and youth was gone.
Thank you for the wonderful reviews. Really encouraging, any volunteer for beta reading is invited... For those who wonder if Scarlett got pregnant, the answer is definite no. I like to think that man are capable of not impregnating and that it would totally ruin the possibility for Scarlett to be the free spirited person I plan for her to be...