She remembered her hot joy in shooting the marauding Yankee.
Violent blood was in them all, perilously close to the surface, lurking just beneath the kindly courteous exteriors.
All of them, all the men she knew, even the drowsy-eyed Ashley and fidgety old Frank, were like that underneath--murderous, violent if the need arose.
Even Rhett, conscienceless scamp that he was, had killed a negro for being "uppity to a lady."
"Oh, Frank, how long will it be like this?" she leaped to her feet.
"As long as the Yankees hate us so, Sugar."
"Is there nothing anybody can do?"
Frank passed a tired hand over his wet beard.
"We are doing things."
"What?"
"Why talk of them till we have accomplished something?
It may take years.
Perhaps--perhaps the South will always be like this."
"Oh, no!"
"Sugar, come to bed. You must be chilled.
You are shaking."
"When will it all end?"
"When we can all vote again, Sugar.
When every man who fought for the South can put a ballot in the box for a Southerner and a Democrat."
"A ballot?" she cried despairingly.
"What good's a ballot when the darkies have lost their minds--when the Yankees have poisoned them against us?"
Frank went on to explain in his patient manner, but the idea that ballots could cure the trouble was too complicated for her to follow.
She was thinking gratefully that Jonas Wilkerson would never again be a menace of Tara and she was thinking about Tony.
"Oh, the poor Fontaines!" she exclaimed.
"Only Alex left and so much to do at Mimosa.
Why didn't Tony have sense enough to--to do it at night when no one would know who it was?
A sight more good he'd do helping with the spring plowing than in Texas."
Frank put an arm about her.
Usually he was gingerly when he did this, as if he anticipated being impatiently shaken off, but tonight there was a far-off look in his eyes and his arm was firm about her waist.
"There are things more important now than plowing, Sugar.
And scaring the darkies and teaching the Scallawags a lesson is one of them.
As long as there are fine boys like Tony left, I guess we won't need to worry about the South too much.
Come to bed."
"But, Frank--"
"If we just stand together and don't give an inch to the Yankees, we'll win, some day.
Don't you bother your pretty head about it, Sugar.
You let your men folks worry about it.
Maybe it won't come in our time, but surely it will come some day. The Yankees will get tired of pestering us when they see they can't even dent us, and then we'll have a decent world to live in and raise our children in."
She thought of Wade and the secret she had carried silently for some days.
No, she didn't want her children raised in this welter of hate and uncertainty, of bitterness and violence lurking just below the surface, of poverty and grinding hardships and insecurity.
She never wanted children of hers to know what all this was like.
She wanted a secure and well-ordered world in which she could look forward and know there was a safe future ahead for them, a world where her children would know only softness and warmth and good clothes and fine food.
Frank thought this could he accomplished by voting.
Voting?
What did votes matter?
Nice people in the South would never have the vote again.
There was only one thing in the world that was a certain bulwark against any calamity which fate could bring, and that was money.
She thought feverishly that they must have money, lots of it to keep them safe against disaster.
Abruptly, she told him she was going to have a baby.
For weeks after Tony's escape, Aunt Pitty's house was subjected to repeated searches by parties of Yankee soldiers.