Scarlett bent her head over the blurred lists, reading rapidly, to find names of friends.
Now that Ashley was safe she could think of other people.
Oh, how long the list was!
How heavy the toll from Atlanta, from all of Georgia.
Good Heavens!
“Calvert—Raiford, Lieutenant.”
Raif!
Suddenly she remembered the day, so long ago, when they had run away together but decided to come home at nightfall because they were hungry and afraid of the dark.
“Fontaine—Joseph K., private.”
Little bad-tempered Joe!
And Sally hardly over having her baby!
“Munroe—LaFayette, Captain.”
And Lafe had been engaged to Cathleen Calvert.
Poor Cathleen!
Hers had been a double loss, a brother and a sweetheart.
But Sally’s loss was greater—a brother and a husband.
Oh, this was too terrible.
She was almost afraid to read further.
Aunt Pitty was heaving and sighing on her shoulder and, with small ceremony, Scarlett pushed her over into a corner of the carriage and continued her reading.
Surely, surely—there couldn’t be three “Tarleton” names on that list. Perhaps—perhaps the hurried printer had repeated the name by error. But no.
There they were.
“Tarleton—Brenton, Lieutenant.”
“Tarleton—Stuart, Corporal.”
“Tarleton—Thomas, private.”
And Boyd, dead the first year of the war, was buried God knew where in Virginia.
All the Tarleton boys gone.
Tom and the lazy long-legged twins with their love of gossip and their absurd practical jokes and Boyd who had the grace of a dancing master and the tongue of a wasp.
She could not read any more.
She could not know if any other of those boys with whom she had grown up, danced, flirted, kissed were on that list. She wished that she could cry, do something to ease the iron fingers that were digging into her throat.
“I’m sorry, Scarlett,” said Rhett.
She looked up at him.
She had forgotten he was still there.
“Many of your friends?”
She nodded and struggled to speak:
“About every family in the County—and all—all three of the Tarleton boys.”
His face was quiet, almost somber, and there was no mocking in his eyes.
“And the end is not yet,” he said.
“These are just the first lists and they’re incomplete.
There’ll be a longer list tomorrow.”
He lowered his voice so that those in the near-by carriages could not hear.
“Scarlett, General Lee must have lost the battle.
I heard at headquarters that he had retreated back into Maryland.”
She raised frightened eyes to his, but her fear did not spring from Lee’s defeat.
Longer casualty lists tomorrow!
Tomorrow.
She had not thought of tomorrow, so happy was she at first that Ashley’s name was not on that list.
Tomorrow.
Why, right this minute he might be dead and she would not know it until tomorrow, or perhaps a week from tomorrow.
“Oh, Rhett, why do there have to be wars?
It would have been so much better for the Yankees to pay for the darkies—or even for us to give them the darkies free of charge than to have this happen.”