We’ve got enough.
Oh, Sister, hurry!”
There were wild squealings, indignant gruntings in the back yard and, running to the widow, Scarlett saw Mammy waddling hurriedly across the cotton field with a struggling young pig under each arm.
Behind her was Pork also carrying two pigs and pushing Gerald before him.
Gerald was stumping across the furrows, waving his cane.
Leaning out of the window Scarlett yelled:
“Get the sow, Dilcey!
Make Prissy drive her out.
You can chase her across the fields!”
Dilcey looked up, her bronzed face harassed. In her apron was a pile of silver tableware. She pointed under the house.
“The sow done bit Prissy and got her penned up unner the house.”
“Good for the sow,” thought Scarlett.
She hurried back into her room and hastily gathered from their hiding place the bracelets, brooch, miniature and cup she had found on the dead Yankee.
But where to hide them?
It was awkward, carrying little Beau in one arm and the wallet and the trinkets in the other.
She started to lay him on the bed.
He set up a wail at leaving her arms and a welcome thought came to her.
What better hiding place could there be than a baby’s diaper?
She quickly turned him over, pulled up his dress and thrust the wallet down the diaper next to his backside.
He yelled louder at this treatment and she hastily tightened the triangular garment about his threshing legs.
“Now,” she thought, drawing a deep breath, “now for the swamp!”
Tucking him screaming under one arm and clutching the jewelry to her with the other, she raced into the upstairs hall.
Suddenly her rapid steps paused, fright weakening her knees.
How silent the house was!
How dreadfully still!
Had they all gone off and left her?
Hadn’t anyone waited for her?
She hadn’t meant for them to leave her here alone.
These days anything could happen to a lone woman and with the Yankees coming—
She jumped as a slight noise sounded and, turning quickly, saw crouched by the banisters her forgotten son, his eyes enormous with terror.
He tried to speak but his throat only worked silently.
“Get up, Wade Hampton,” she commanded swiftly.
“Get up and walk.
Mother can’t carry you now.”
He ran to her, like a small frightened animal, and clutching her wide skirt, buried his face in it.
She could feel his small hands groping through the folds for her legs.
She started down the stairs, each step hampered by Wade’s dragging hands and she said fiercely:
“Turn me loose, Wade!
Turn me loose and walk!”
But the child only clung the closer.
As she reached the landing, the whole lower floor leaped up at her.
All the homely, well-loved articles of furniture seemed to whisper:
“Good-by!
Good-by!” A sob rose in her throat.
There was the open door of the office where Ellen had labored so diligently and she could glimpse a corner of the old secretary.
There was the dining room, with chairs pushed awry and food still on the plates.
There on the floor were the rag rugs Ellen had dyed and woven herself.
And there was the old portrait of Grandma Robillard, with bosoms half bared, hair piled high and nostrils cut so deeply as to give her face a perpetual well-bred sneer.
Everything which had been part of her earliest memories, everything bound up with the deepest roots in her:
“Good-by!