Good evening, dear readers!
I'm posting a new chapter, it was not easy for me, like puzzle pieces to put together a picture.
I remind you, that Scarlett is not abandoned on the road by Rhett with Melanie and the children, but he took her to her parents, they talked and she is quietly happy. She's not bitter. She reacts very differently to a lot of the dramatic events in her life in that state.
The site has been acting strange since Sunday evening, I get all your reviews in the mail but I don't see them on the site. But,I'm reading everything, thank you so much to everyone who writes, it's very inspiring! :)
Enjoy reading!
I own nothing in regard to GWTW.
P.S. Don't be too quick to get angry at Rhett, there's a reason for everything.
Chapter 20.
In early May 1864, when Rhett had already joined the active army, the fighting for Atlanta began.
On 2 September Atlanta fell and General Sherman, known for his brutality, began his "March to the Sea" across Georgia. His army moved forward, burning everything in its path. The looting and lack of a gentleman's code shocked the Southerners who encountered these soldiers on their way.
Sherman ended his march on Savannah in December 1864 with the capture of the city.
In fact the Confederate army was wiped out by this time, with some units still trying to resist on various fronts, but the outcome of the war was clear and inevitable.
On 9 April 1865, General Lee surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox, thus ending the bloodiest collision on the mainland. The war was over!
In early January 1866, a thin, serious, young woman sat at her mother's once elegant secretary with papers in her hands and looked at them with despair.
Her green eyes ran quickly over the lines for the third time, but she couldn't believe what she was reading and her brain began to think feverishly, trying to find a way out.
There was a knock on the door and she looked up sharply and answered in a cold tone, "Come in."
Melanie opened the door and seeing the serious look in her sister-in-law's eyes, she realized that the letter contained bad news. She decided she would find out from her after dinner, so she said quietly, "Scarlett, Darling, dinner will be served in 15 minutes, we're waiting for you. You've hardly had breakfast," she finished her speech with a faint smile, clutching the brass doorknob in her hand.
Scarlett looked at her and only nodded, saying quietly, "All right, Melly," and began studying the papers again.
Melanie sighed quietly, closed the door behind her and went up to the second floor bedroom to check on her son, Beau, before dinner.
The baby was sleeping quietly in his wooden cot, Melanie stroked his soft brown hair affectionately, then stepped back to the window. Looking out at the acres of red land that had survived the clash of two armies, she recalled all the events of the past year and a half.
The day Captain Butler left, Melanie found Scarlett on the swing under the big tree, pensive, but with an affectionate gleam in her eyes.
Quietly, as if afraid to frighten away the feeling of happiness, as if afraid to waste precious memories, Scarlett told her sister-in-law some of her conversation with Rhett. When she heard about his confession, Melanie hugged her affectionately and kissed her cheek, whispering, "I'm so happy for you Scarlett, I'll pray for Captain Butler as well as for Ashley."
Scarlett only smiled weakly at these words.
A couple of weeks before the fighting began, early in July, Mrs O'Hara fell ill. A cold that Ellen ignored, which developed into a severe form of pneumonia in this hot climate. Scarlett was puzzled at the time and told Melanie how ever-healthy Ellen O'Hara could have fallen ill. But then Wade got sick too, and Scarlett took care of her mother, who was delirious, and then Wade, who also had a fever.She suspected it was all due to the icy well water, but apparently her mother's body was exhausted from the constant worrying, and Wade's age made him sick too.
Melanie recalled how Scarlett was torn between the two rooms, splitting duty at her mother's bedside with Mammy and at Wade's bedside with Prissy. She pulled Dilsey, who'd just given a birth to a baby, and Melanie, who was already seven months pregnant, off duty.
Gerald and the O'Hara girls were extremely quiet in those days, and even the sounds of fighting nearby did not break the frightening silence of the house.
Ellen O'Hara died in mid-July, burnt out like a match, leaving behind a sad and silent home, an inconsolable husband, orphaned family and a pale elder daughter with eyes round with horror and pain. Dr Fontaine could do nothing. "Too fragile a body, and pneumonia is dangerous in peacetime, even in wartime," he complained quietly and added, "but your son will be fine." Scarlett stood with her hands clasped in front of her, and Mammy quietly wiped her tears with her white apron.
Two weeks later, Mr O'Hara also died. He was extremely quiet after the death of his precious wife, almost did not eat, did not go to the cemetery and one evening took the very horse that "could not take the hurdles" and rode across the fields. Before the first hurdle the horse stopped and Gerald flew out of the saddle. Pork found him a couple of hours later, when the house noticed his absence. Gerald was already dead.
Melanie was afraid to remember those days, she was afraid for Scarlett, for her state of mind. As her sisters had cried their eyes out at their father and mother's funerals, but Scarlett's eyes were dry. This frightened Melanie, she tried to talk to her sister-in-law, but she just kept silent and did some chores around the house.
Tara was fortunate, the fighting was some way from the estate, but it did not spare her from looting and pillaging. Sherman's passing army took everything they could carry, everything they couldn't hide. Melanie did not remember these events well; she was already in bed at the end of August, barely able to get up. But she knew that Scarlett had defended the house by going out on the porch with her little son. A ransacked house and a small fire in the stable, all that the soldiers of the north had left behind.
On 1 September Melanie gave birth to a son, Beau, and Dr Fontaine, who delivered the baby, confirmed Scarlett's fears. Without medical attention, mother and child probably wouldn't have survived.
As Melanie recovered from her difficult labour, Scarlett thanked heaven that there was Dilsey, who was able to nurse both her baby and Melanie's baby.
At the beginning of autumn, Tara stood empty, looted and orphaned. Scarlett wondered how they would all survive on the meagre supplies of food they had stashed away. With neighbours helping each other, they exchanged leftover provisions with the Fontaines and Tarletones.
Melanie sighed heavily and wiped her eyes. If it pained her to remember it, she was afraid to imagine the pain Scarlett carried in her soul.
Melanie remembered the first and last time her sister-in-law had cried.
It had been in early November.
That afternoon, the house stood empty. Carreen, Suellen, Pork, Dilsey and Prissy walked to the Tarletons' to exchange provisions and talk a little. She herself was still too weak and stayed at home with Beau. Scarlett didn't want to go either, she had rubbed her toe badly and it hurt to walk. Despite entreaties to go with his aunts, Wade missed his mother, who hardly had time for him, so he stayed home with them. Mammy went to the well to check on the silver they had stashed there and to get some water.
The house was quiet, she and the children were resting in her bedroom, and Scarlett was somewhere downstairs.
Suddenly, in the silence of an autumn sunny and quiet day, there was the sound of horses' hooves, and as she was getting out of bed, a shot rang out downstairs. Loud as a clap of thunder.
Melanie turned pale, she quickly took Charles's sabre off the wall, and with a glance at the awake, sleepy children, quickly left the room.
Her heart was pounding frantically, thoughts raced through her head, "Only if Scarlett would be alright... Please. Captain Butler wouldn't bare if anything happened to her. Please, God..."
Quietly sneaking down the corridor on the second floor, Melanie saw Scarlett standing on the stairs against the wall, with gun in hand. Intercepting her sister-in-law's gaze, Melanie saw a Yankee soldier lying in a pool of blood at the base of the stairs. A mahogany box, rosary beads, sewing supplies were lying around him. The Yankee was dead.
"I killed him, Melly" whispered Scarlett quietly, and Melly, quickly casting aside her sabre, came swiftly to her sister-in-law and embraced her.
"I'm so glad you killed him, Honey! I'm proud of you! He's a deserter, I'm afraid to imagine what he would have done to you..." she spoke softly.
"I killed him," Scarlett whispered again, trying to realize what had happened.
Melanie hugged her sister even tighter, but then Mammy, who was still able to move more quietly than a mouse, carefully entered the house.
When she saw the Yankee, then Scarlett with the gun in her hands and Melanie in her nightgown, she knew it all at once.
"Miss Scarlett, let's get him out of here before the others come back," Mammy commanded, pulling out rags to clean everything up.
Melanie offered to search the satchel and pockets, and then, as Mammy and Scarlett dragged the murdered man to the far corner of the yard, she headed for the children.
The next morning, at breakfast, when almost everyone had dispersed, Suellen inadvertently dropped a cup while clearing the table. When this happened, Scarlett, who was sitting pensively, shuddered violently, almost shrieking with fright.
Then, saying quietly, "I'm sorry, I was thinking and the sound startled me," she went quietly into the kitchen and then the door to the back porch was heard to slam. Melanie looked worriedly at Mammy and she went to the kitchen.
Five minutes later, when everyone had gone, Melanie hurried to them and found Mammy sitting on the steps and Scarlett sitting beside her, her head on her lap, sobbing.
Mammy only stroked her back and hair affectionately, saying, "It's all right, my little girl, it's all right...Cry, cry, my good girl... Our brave little girl, cry... My little lamb..."
Melanie sat quietly next to Scarlett on her other side, found her hand and held it tightly. They were with her.
Melanie, turned away from the window as she heard the bedroom door open quietly and Ashley walked in. Wearing an old grey shirt, with the sleeves rolled up, brown trousers and black boots. He walked over to Melanie and asked her affectionately, stroking her cheek, "Are you okay, Honey? You look sad..."
"Ah, Ashley," she replied quietly, hugged her husband and spoke, "I saw Scarlett downstairs in her mother's office, she looks worried, something's wrong, Ashley..."
He looked wistfully out of the window, hugging his wife. After returning from the war, finding Twelve Oaks burned, he lived in Tara with his family, doing all the work he could. He was very grateful for Scarlett's shelter, but he didn't recognize her at all. She was cold, her gaze hard, her speech quiet and curt. She hardly laughed or cried, smiling only at Wade and Ashley often talked quietly with Melanie about how helping Scarlett come round.
"If Captain Butler were here," Melly said quietly to her husband, "He would help... I'm sure, he would! He loves her so much, Ashley!"
Ashley listened incredulously, but nodded.
There had been no word from Captain Butler. Not a single letter since that May morning.
That afternoon, gathered over dinner in the once richly and tastefully decorated dining room, Scarlett told her sisters, Will, Melanie and Ashley, that Tara's taxes had been raised. That it was the machinations of their former overseer.
"What are we going to do, Scarlett?" asked Suellen nervously. Though she was going to marry Frank Kennedy soon, the thought of her parents' house going up for auction shocked her. Carreen just sat quietly at the table, carefully avoiding Will's affectionate gaze.
"I'll find the money," Scarlett said firmly and stood up from the table.
Will and Ashley looked over at each other. Ashley had a great appreciation for this short-tempered, serious, but kind man who had appeared at Tara a couple of months before his arrival.
He'd helped with the work, been a deft worker, a trusted friend. He was the only one who could occasionally talk to Scarlett, though from the outside it looked like they were more silent.
The others were still talking quietly at the table, and Scarlett had already gone up to her bedroom, hungry as always, but she had become so used to the feeling of hunger in the nearly two years since she had been there that it hardly bothered her.
Nutrition was the worst of all. A very meagre ration, which consisted mainly of vegetables, corn bread, sometimes fish (if Pork was successful in fishing), milk from a cow and a few chickens (which they were able to buy with 'that' Yankee's money) that laid eggs. There was no meat at all.
And, Scarlett ate the least. She secretly gave her portions to Wade, who was growing up and constantly wanting to eat, he had just turned four but he was very skinny.
Scarlett didn't hear from Rhett, and it drove her crazy and desperate every time she thought about it. And she was thinking about it all the time, whether she was picking cotton, or tilling vegetables in the garden, or gathering eggs in the henhouse, or grooming the horse. Her thoughts kept returning to him, to their last meeting, to his quiet words, "I love you always, every minute of my life. I love you..." Their last kiss, tender, but how tightly he held her against him.
The worst was at night, she always went to bed hungry but fell asleep quickly from constant fatigue, but it was this combination of hunger and fatigue that gave her frequent nightmares.
The fog, the cold, the hunger... She's running, running, running... Scared, cold... Despair... Tears... Screaming...
Every night, Scarlett woke up in a cold sweat, shivering, wrapped herself in the blanket and couldn't sleep for a long time.
There was a quiet knock on the door, she turned away from the window and answered, "Come in."
Suellen quietly entered the room and asked, "Can we talk, Scarlett?"
The woman only nodded and gestured her to sit on the bed.
Suellen sat down, quietly going through the folds of her old pink dress, she began to speak, "Scarlett, about the taxes..."
Scarlett, who was standing by the window, looked up at her questioningly.
"I can talk to Frank, he did ask for my hand in marriage from you back in the autumn," she continued and Scarlett nodded.
"Anyway, he wrote to me that he wants to get married in March, that he's saved up a small amount of money. I don't think he'll be able to help much, but a third of the amount I think he can give..." finished Suellen's speech and Scarlett looked at her with a mixture of surprise and gratitude.
"Why do you want to do this?" asked Scarlett quietly.
Suellen wrinkled her nose, her elder sister had never seen her as more than a little sister. But, she was her parents' daughter.
"Because, this is our home, Scarlett. Our parents' house. Our father built it and our mother brought comfort and coziness to here, it will hurt me to lose it, just like it will hurt you," she finished quietly and Scarlett sighed heavily.
She'd forgotten what it was like when someone cared...
"Thank you, I really appreciate it. If Frank helps us, I'll be very grateful to him and of course we'll give it all to him. It'll be on borrowed time," she said seriously.
Suellen nodded and quietly left the room.
The next day at breakfast, Ashley also told at the table that he had a couple of friends of his father's in Atlanta who might be able to help them with some of the money. Scarlett, sitting at the table, who had eaten almost nothing as usual, looked at him with the same look of gratitude.
She was not alone in dealing with this problem. Her family was with her. Scarlett thought of Rhett. If he were with them, if he were with her now..."Where are you, Rhett..." she thought quietly but tearfully to herself.
"Scarlett, Scarlett," Melanie called softly to her.
"I'm sorry, Melly, I was thinking, "and she returned her attention back to her family at the table.
Ashley cleared his throat and said, "Then we need to get to Atlanta faster. Me, Scarlett and Suellen will go. Scarlett, you'll talk to Uncle Henry, right?"
Scarlett nodded, she was really hoping for her husband's uncle's help. The old lawyer had always been smart about financial matters.
"Shall we set off the other day then?" asked Ashley.
Scarlett nodded again and decided to plan a trip in a couple of days.
But everything changed for Scarlett when she received a letter from Aunt Pitty the next day, who, while describing the town news and gossip, said she had met Captain Butler in the street a week ago.
At this point Scarlett's eyes went black and she grabbed the back of her chair to keep from falling. He was alive!
"Melly, Rhett," she whispered quietly, " he is alive..."
"Ashley, get some water, quick!" said Melanie quietly and motioned for Scarlett to sit down.
She just helped her head and began to read on, there were couple of sentences, "...and you know who I met? Captain Butler! Yes, yes, I didn't expect him to come to me so quickly. He asked right away about you and Melanie, Honey, and I told him you were all right at Tara. He was glad to hear that, then he gave me a slight bow and walked away quickly. I must say he looked very well, as always, in his black suit, with a black felt hat. Girls, and in fact, there's a lot of rumours about him. That he was very rich, and Dolly had heard some talk that he'd not stayed at the hotel as it's being rebuilt. They say he's friends with that woman and he stayed at hers, you know who I mean, don't you? I'm not allowed to write her name here. By the way, her place is thriving and..." Aunt Pitty went on from topic to topic, and there was not another line about Rhett.
Scarlett silently handed the letter to Melanie, got up and left the room, and in a minute she was out of the house.
Melanie looked sadly at Ashley, who appeared confused with a glass of water in his hands and Mammy shook her head unhappily. "And why on earth did our late Miss Ellen like him? Naive was my mistress! Look how upset my lamb is after reading just a few lines about that man!" she scolded quietly, and went to set the table, grumbling unceasingly.
Scarlett walked further and further away from the house, down the driveway lined with evergreen cedars.
She walked, without looking back. She wanted to be alone because her soul was aching.
She came to the river where she had once walked with her father and looking at the water, she finally allowed herself to cry.
Yes, he was alive and that was happiness! What a relief to know that he had not perished somewhere in the fields of Virginia, that he was alive and well. But, he didn't come and he didn't even let her know about him. The letter had been a week in the mail, the post office was still not working well, so it had been about two weeks since they had met with Aunt Pitty. And he hadn't made himself known.
"Or maybe I had been dreaming it all," Scarlett thought and quietly wiped the tears from her eyes.
"I love you always, every minute of my life. I love you..." his voice seemed to echo around her.
"He must be with that woman. Probably. Or definitely."
Then Scarlett raised her head, her eyes glittering with a cold green light, and she only said quietly, as if cutting invisible threads of hope and affection inside her with a sharp knife, "That's it, Scarlett. Put a stop to it here. No more Rhett Butler. He's alive and that's good news. The rest is none of your business. You have enough worries of your own and the main one is money for Tara. That's it."
She took a couple of deep breaths, then clenched her hands into fists and walked toward the house.