"Tara again," Rhett said, a little distastefully as the mist began to settle around them. "I'm beginning to feel like I own this place."
"But you do," said Melanie, surprising him, as the trees and fences became clearer, more distinct, around them. "You give—gave—Scarlett money for its upkeep. A part of Tara, then, is yours."
He had never thought of it that way before: of Tara, as his. He looked around, curiously. Even on the dark starless night that had materialized along with the house and trees, there was a bright moon, and he could see all the way down to the bottoms near the river. It was—well, from what he could see—it was a good piece of land. He understood, now, something of why Gerald—and Scarlett—had always been so attached to the place. "There's Irish in me, too," Rhett muttered, feeling the stirrings of something akin to—pride? Longing?—in his chest. "But, thank God, I've the wits to resist it."
He turned toward the plantation house and then he had a shock, for Tara did not look the way he had always seen it before. It lacked the grandeur of the days before the war—even the serviceability and austere plainness it had had when he had visited it, more recently. It was dilapidated, now: the brick crumbling, the whitewashed faded and streaked with scorch marks. The roof was sagging in places; window panes had been broken out and their empty places stuffed with rags. A closer look at his surroundings revealed that the yard was overgrown, the fences gapped like missing teeth.
"Cut down for firewood," Melanie whispered. "Oh, those nights were so cold."
"Is this the future?" Rhett asked, uneasily. "Miss Melly—is this what will happen to Tara if I cut Scarlett off from my account?"
Melanie smiled. "Scarlett would never let Tara look like this again, Captain Butler. She would find a way—even if she had to sell herself to do it. No; this is still the past. This is Christmas, 1865—the first Christmas after the war. Such a dark time—but Ashley was home, and it meant the world to me."
As if Melanie's words had set something into motion, some driving force behind the scene, the door opened on the verandah, and Melanie herself appeared—younger, thin as a lathe, dressed in a ragged calico gown, but with a radiant smile on her face.
"Scarlett, Scarlett!" she cried. "Come and see—it's snowing. Big, goosedown feathers—we'll have a White Christmas this year."
Behind the young Melanie, a hungry cat of a woman appeared. It took Rhett a moment to realize that this was Scarlett. My God, he thought, she's so skinny? Her cheekbones stood out sharply under her skin, and her eyes were too large in her face, in the way that hunger brings them out. Her dress, if it was possible, was in even worse condition than Melanie's, and her feet were covered against the cold with pieces of old carpeting. Rhett crept closer to hear her speak—her voice was as thin and reedy as her body.
"Snow," said Scarlett, flatly. "And I put those winter crops in the ground only two weeks ago. They'll be killed now—can't survive a freezing frost. We'll have no potatoes till spring, now, Melly, and I don't know what we'll do."
With a little shock Rhett noted how easily, and certainly, she spoke of things like crops and frosts. It was the same way she sometimes spoke of lumber or planning technique at the mill. He had always supposed it was Scarlett putting on airs—he knew little of these things himself. But now he saw that there had been hidden depths of knowledge to his wife he had never suspected.
"Oh, Scarlett," chided the Melanie-of-then. "Can't we have a little Christmas cheer this year? With Ashley home—and the war over—and all of us safe and together?"
"With Mother gone," Scarlett countered. "And your own brother Charlie dead, Melanie?"
Melanie dissolved into tears, and Rhett saw Scarlett check her annoyance.
"I shouldn't have said that," she confessed, awkwardly. "Melly, I didn't mean it. I'm just so worried—and tired. Suellen's lazy as a lump and no help—and Pa—oh, Pa's worse than no help. He's lost his mind. Don't cry, Melanie. You go on in the kitchen and help Mammy with supper. I'm going down to the river to cut a tree. You said you wanted a Christmas tree, just like old times, and I'm going to get one, and bring it up, and we'll decorate it. Won't that make you feel better?"
They followed Scarlett down to the river bottom and watched her select a thin spruce sapling, and with a small ax, attack the trunk to bring it down. It took her some while, and Rhett saw his wife, always so sumptuously dressed, so desirous of the best things in life, lay down in the dirt with seemingly no mind of it. After much grunting and huffing, she felled the small tree, and then dragged it up the path, over the verandah, and into the house, where the family crowded around her in delight.
"Oh, Scarlett! It's perfect! What will we put on it? In the old days we would have had cranberry strings, and popped corn…"
"No food wasted on this tree," Scarlett said wearily. "That's all I ask. Pa, come away from that fire, honey. You'll burn yourself, Pa, darling. There's a good boy."
Rhett recoiled again when he saw the wasted frame of Gerald O'Hara—vacant of eye, hanging of mouth. He trotted after his daughter like a small child, and Rhett felt his heart thump painfully in his chest as Scarlett spoke to him so gently, with such agony in her eyes. Her strong, solid Pa—all through the journey from Atlanta she had clung to the idea that he would be her protector. To arrive home—to find him this way?
"Mrs. O'Hara will be liking this tree," he said—but hadn't Scarlett mentioned that her mother was dead?
"No, Pa!" Scarlett was sharp. "Pa, she—she—oh, never mind, there's no use trying to reason with him."
For the first time, Rhett noticed Ashley hovered at the edge of the throng. "Scarlett," he said in a low, beaten voice, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted a tree? I would have gone and gotten it. There was no need to go yourself."
Scarlett had been standing the tree against the wall, now she turned to Ashley with miserable eyes. "Oh, Ashley—you would have bungled it somehow. It was better just to do it myself." The disillusionment in her voice was crushing, and Ashley reeled back from the note in her tone. Scarlett seemed to remember herself, and straightened.
"I mean, I didn't mind getting it. I wanted to go. I was glad to do it. So you needn't worry. Oh, Melly, what are you crying for, now?" For Melly was weeping soundlessly, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Scarlett, it's a nice tree and I—I'm so grateful, but—but it isn't a thing like Christmas after all. There are no presents and—and—no music…"
Scarlett brushed the dirt from her hands, and sat down at the piano, which was missing the ivory from most of the keys. "We won't have any presents," she said. "And there's nothing I can do for that. But we can have music, while we trim the tree." She played a clamorous chord—the piano was badly out of tune—and sang, in her off-key soprano, the opening lines of the Wexford Carol:
"With thankful heart and joyful mind, the shepherds went the babe to find—Mammy, you help these girls and Ashley trim this tree. And Pork, try and keep Pa from making a nuisance of himself."
"We can use these old portieres for decoration," Suellen was saying, and Scarlett called, suddenly, over her shoulder,
"No! Don't do that! We might need them for something else."
"Miss Ellen's po'tieres," murmured Mammy, ominously.
Scarlett continued paying, but Rhett could see her glance over her shoulder at Melanie's thin face, from time to time. He could not help but see that her eyes also followed Ashley. But for the first time, they did not seek him out of ardor. He realized that she was just checking, to make sure that all of them, were doing all right.
And there was no one checking to make sure that Scarlett, herself, was.
It was a side of his wife Rhett had never seen before. Caring about other people—worrying over them. He felt shamed, for he had never known that things had been so difficult for her. She had spoken of it, sometimes, after their marriage—the hunger, the weariness, the fear—but his soul writhed, remembering his words in response. There, there, honey. As though she were only Bonnie, worried about monsters in the dark. He had never stopped to listen to her—to really listen. What if he had said, instead, Scarlett, I will never let that happen to you, again, and meant it? Would she have relaxed in her desperate quest for safety, security? Would she have had time to devote to kindness, and gentleness, in its place?
"I suppose you wanted to show me that I was wrong," Rhett said shortly to Melanie beside him. "Well—you've shown me."
"You haven't seen everything," Melanie told him, as Scarlett got up from the piano and slipped out to the verandah. "Let's follow her."
They followed Scarlett as she made her way down a dark path to the old Tara graveyard. She kept looking over her shoulder, back toward the house, to make sure she was alone. When she was quite sure she stepped toward a grave—there was no headstone, but a piece of wood scarred with the letters, E. O'H. For the second time that evening, Scarlett slumped to the ground, heedless of the dirt. She put her hand on the makeshift marker and she began to cry.
Rhett had never seen her cry before. Oh, yes—crocodile tears, angry wailings. But real tears—tears of true sorrow? No. At least: he had not thought he had. But Scarlett cried now, leaning her head against her mother's initials.
"Oh, Mother," she sobbed. "Everything is so hard, Mother. Pa isn't right, and the girls are no help. Mother, I am all alone. I think I'll always be alone. Ashley, Ashley—!" Rhett felt a shiver of revulsion go through him. He did not want to listen to Scarlett declare her love for another man.
But she continued, "Ashley is useless, Mother. I thought when he came back he'd lighten this weary load for me. But he can't—he can't! Nobody can."
She wept silently for a few moments, and then surprised him, again, by speaking his name: "Rhett! Rhett Butler! Why did you leave us here? Why did you even both saving us—if you were just going to bring us here to die?"
He wanted to go to her, and put a hand on her shaking shoulder. An anger bubbled up in his chest—but it was anger at himself. If he had known it would be so hard for her, he would have stayed. Running off to join the army—it was something that he did for himself. Some perverse idealism, some romantic notion, some desire for adventure. Thinking that people would die, if he didn't. When other people had needed him—had very nearly died, because he did.
"Take me away from here," he said, harshly, to Melanie—the harshest he had ever spoken to her. "I don't want to see her like this. She wouldn't have wanted me to."—thinking of her green velvet gown, her brave hen-feathered hat, when she had visited him in jail. "Take me away, I say! Melanie—Spirit—whatever you are—I don't want to see the past anymore. I don't wish to!"
Melanie's touch was cool on his hand.
"Fine," she said. "Let us leave the past—and move on to the present."