“Cousin Melanie, this is your home.
Twelve Oaks is burned.
You must stay with us.”
Thoughts of Melanie’s prolonged suffering spurred Scarlett to action.
The present was with her again, the necessity of laying Melanie and her child on a soft bed and doing those small things for her that could be done.
“She must be carried.
She can’t walk.”
There was a scuffle of feet and a dark figure emerged from the cave of the front hall.
Pork ran down the steps.
“Miss Scarlett!
Miss Scarlett!” he cried.
Scarlett caught him by the arms.
Pork, part and parcel of Tara, as dear as the bricks and the cool corridors!
She felt his tears stream down on her hands as he patted her clumsily, crying:
“Sho is glad you back!
Sho is—”
Prissy burst into tears and incoherent mumblings:
“Poke!
Poke, honey!”
And little Wade, encouraged by the weakness of his elders, began sniffling:
“Wade thirsty!”
Scarlett caught them all in hand.
“Miss Melanie is in the wagon and her baby too.
Pork, you must carry her upstairs very carefully and put her in the back company room.
Prissy, take the baby and Wade inside and give Wade a drink of water.
Is Mammy here, Pork?
Tell her I want her.”
Galvanized by the authority in her voice, Pork approached the wagon and fumbled at the backboard.
A moan was wrenched from Melanie as he half-lifted, half-dragged her from the feather tick on which she had lain so many hours.
And then she was in Pork’s strong arms, her head drooping like a child’s across his shoulder.
Prissy, holding the baby and dragging Wade by the hand, followed them up the wide steps and disappeared into the blackness of the hall.
Scarlett’s bleeding fingers sought her father’s hand urgently.
“Did they get well, Pa?”
“The girls are recovering.”
Silence fell and in the silence an idea too monstrous for words took form.
She could not, could not force it to her lips.
She swallowed and swallowed but a sudden dryness seemed to have stuck the sides of her throat together.
Was this the answer to the frightening riddle of Tara’s silence?
As if answering the question in her mind Gerald spoke.
“Your mother—” he said and stopped.
“And—Mother?”
“Your mother died yesterday.”
Her father’s arm held tightly in her own, Scarlett felt her way down the wide dark hall which, even in its blackness, was as familiar as her own mind.
She avoided the high-backed chairs, the empty gun rack, the old sideboard with its protruding claw feet, and she felt herself drawn by instinct to the tiny office at the back of the house where Ellen always sat, keeping her endless accounts.
Surely, when she entered that room, Mother would again be sitting there before the secretary and would look up, quill poised, and rise with sweet fragrance and rustling hoops to meet her tired daughter.
Ellen could not be dead, not even though Pa had said it, said it over and over like a parrot that knows only one phrase:
“She died yesterday—she died yesterday—she died yesterday.” Queer that she should feel nothing now, nothing except a weariness that shackled her limbs with heavy iron chains and a hunger that made her knees tremble.
She would think of Mother later.
She must put her mother out of her mind now, else she would stumble stupidly like Gerald or sob monotonously like Wade.
Pork came down the wide dark steps toward them, hurrying to press close to Scarlett like a cold animal toward a fire.