Tell Melly that.
Tell her to write it to his girls.
And a good soldier for all his years.
A shell got him.
Came right down on him and his horse.
Tore the horse’s— I shot the horse myself, poor creature.
A fine little mare she was.
You’d better write Mrs. Tarleton about that, too.
She set a store on that mare.
Wrap up my lunch, child.
I must be going.
There, dear, don’t take it so hard.
What better way can an old man die than doing a young man’s work?”
“Oh, he shouldn’t have died!
He shouldn’t have ever gone to the war.
He should have lived and seen his grandchild grow up and died peacefully in bed.
Oh, why did he go?
He didn’t believe in secession and he hated the war and—”
“Plenty of us think that way, but what of it?”
Uncle Henry blew his nose grumpily.
“Do you think I enjoy letting Yankee riflemen use me for a target at my age?
But there’s no other choice for a gentleman these days.
Kiss me good-by, child, and don’t worry about me.
I’ll come through this war safely.”
Scarlett kissed him and heard him go down the steps into the dark, heard the latch click on the front gate.
She stood for a minute looking at the keepsakes in her hand.
And then she went up the stairs to tell Melanie.
At the end of July came the unwelcome news, predicted by Uncle Henry, that the Yankees had swung around again toward Jonesboro.
They had cut the railroad four miles below the town, but they had been beaten off by the Confederate cavalry; and the engineering corps, sweating in the broiling sun, had repaired the line.
Scarlett was frantic with anxiety.
For three days she waited, fear growing in her heart.
Then a reassuring letter came from Gerald.
The enemy had not reached Tara.
They had heard the sound of the fight but they had seen no Yankees.
Gerald’s letter was so full of brag and bluster as to how the Yankees had been driven from the railroad that one would have thought he personally had accomplished the feat, single handed.
He wrote for three pages about the gallantry of the troops and then, at the end of his letter, mentioned briefly that Carreen was ill.
The typhoid, Mrs. O’Hara said it was.
She was not very ill and Scarlett was not to worry about her, but on no condition must she come home now, even if the railroad should become safe.
Mrs. O’Hara was very glad now that Scarlett and Wade had not come home when the siege began.
Mrs. O’Hara said Scarlett must go to church and say some Rosaries for Carreen’s recovery.
Scarlett’s conscience smote her at this last, for it had been months since she had been to church.
Once she would have thought this omission a mortal sin but, somehow, staying away from church did not seem so sinful now as it formerly had.
But she obeyed her mother and going to her room gabbled a hasty Rosary.
When she rose from her knees she did not feel as comforted as she had formerly felt after prayer.
For some time she had felt that God was not watching out for her, the Confederates or the South, in spite of the millions of prayers ascending to Him daily.
That night she sat on the front porch with Gerald’s letter in her bosom where she could touch it occasionally and bring Tara and Ellen closer to her.
The lamp in the parlor window threw odd golden shadows onto the dark vine-shrouded porch, and the matted tangle of yellow climbing roses and honeysuckle made a wall of mingled fragrance about her.
The night was utterly still.
Not even the crack of a rifle had sounded since sunset and the world seemed far away.
Scarlett rocked back and forth, lonely, miserable since reading the news from Tara, wishing that someone, anyone, even Mrs. Merriwether, were with her.