“Now,” said Grandma, peering into her face, “what’s wrong at Tara?
What are you keeping back?”
Scarlett looked up into the keen old eyes and knew she could tell the truth, without tears.
No one could cry in the presence of Grandma Fontaine without her express permission.
“Mother is dead,” she said flatly.
The hand on her arm tightened until it pinched and the wrinkled lids over the yellow eyes blinked.
“Did the Yankees kill her?”
“She died of typhoid.
Died—the day before I came home.”
“Don’t think about it,” said Grandma sternly and Scarlett saw her swallow.
“And your Pa?”
“Pa is—Pa is not himself.”
“What do you mean?
Speak up.
Is he ill?”
“The shock—he is so strange—he is not—”
“Don’t tell me he’s not himself.
Do you mean his mind is unhinged?”
It was a relief to hear the truth put so baldly.
How good the old lady was to offer no sympathy that would make her cry.
“Yes,” she said dully, “he’s lost his mind.
He acts dazed and sometimes he can’t seem to remember that Mother is dead.
Oh, Old Miss, it’s more than I can stand to see him sit by the hour, waiting for her and so patiently too, and he used to have no more patience than a child.
But it’s worse when he does remember that she’s gone.
Every now and then, after he’s sat still with his ear cocked listening for her, he jumps up suddenly and stumps out of the house and down to the burying ground.
And then he comes dragging back with the tears all over his face and he says over and over till I could scream:
‘Katie Scarlett, Mrs. O’Hara is dead.
Your mother is dead,’ and it’s just like I was hearing it again for the first time.
And sometimes, late at night, I hear him calling her and I get out of bed and go to him and tell him she’s down at the quarters with a sick darky.
And he fusses because she’s always tiring herself out nursing people.
And it’s so hard to get him back to bed.
He’s like a child.
Oh, I wish Dr. Fontaine was here!
I know he could do something for Pa!
And Melanie needs a doctor too.
She isn’t getting over her baby like she should—”
“Melly—a baby?
And she’s with you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s Melly doing with you?
Why isn’t she in Macon with her aunt and her kinfolks?
I never thought you liked her any too well, Miss, for all she was Charles’ sister.
Now, tell me all about it.”
“It’s a long story, Old Miss.
Don’t you want to go back in the house and sit down?”
“I can stand,” said Grandma shortly.
“And if you told your story in front of the others, they’d be bawling and making you feel sorry for yourself.
Now, let’s have it.”
Scarlett began haltingly with the siege and Melanie’s condition, but as her story progressed beneath the sharp old eyes which never faltered in their gaze, she found words, words of power and horror.
It all came back to her, the sickeningly hot day of the baby’s birth, the agony of fear, the flight and Rhett’s desertion.