Image with the sleeping pink morsel against her dark breast--all a

dream from which she would awake, to smell bacon frying in the

kitchen, hear the throaty laughter of the negroes and the creaking

of wagons fieldward bound, and Ellen's gentle insistent hand upon

her.

Then she discovered she was in her own room, on her own bed, faint

moonlight pricking the darkness, and Mammy and Dilcey were

undressing her. The torturing stays no longer pinched her waist

and she could breathe deeply and quietly to the bottom of her lungs

and her abdomen. She felt her stockings being stripped gently from

her and heard Mammy murmuring indistinguishable comforting sounds

as she bathed her blistered feet. How cool the water was, how good

to lie here in softness, like a child. She sighed and relaxed and

after a time which might have been a year or a second, she was

alone and the room was brighter as the rays of the moon streamed in

across the bed.

She did not know she was drunk, drunk with fatigue and whisky. She

only knew she had left her tired body and floated somewhere above

It where there was no pain and weariness and her brain saw things

with an inhuman clarity.

She was seeing things with new eyes for, somewhere along the long

road to Tara, she had left her girlhood behind her. She was no

longer plastic clay, yielding imprint to each new experience. The

clay had hardened, some time in this indeterminate day which had

lasted a thousand years. Tonight was the last time she would ever

be ministered to as a child. She was a woman now and youth was

gone.

No, she could not, would not, turn to Gerald's or Ellen's families.

The O'Haras did not take charity. The O'Haras looked after their

own. Her burdens were her own and burdens were for shoulders

strong enough to bear them. She thought without surprise, looking

down from her height, that her shoulders were strong enough to bear

anything now, having borne the worst that could ever happen to her.

She could not desert Tara; she belonged to the red acres far more

than they could ever belong to her. Her roots went deep into the

blood-colored soil and sucked up life, as did the cotton. She

would stay at Tara and keep it, somehow, keep her father and her

sisters, Melanie and Ashley's child, the negroes. Tomorrow--oh,

tomorrow! Tomorrow she would fit the yoke about her neck.

Tomorrow there would be so many things to do. Go to Twelve Oaks

and the MacIntosh place and see if anything was left in the

deserted gardens, go to the river swamps and beat them for straying

hogs and chickens, go to Jonesboro and Lovejoy with Ellen's

jewelry--there must be someone left there who would sell something

to eat. Tomorrow--tomorrow--her brain ticked slowly and more

slowly, like a clock running down, but the clarity of vision

persisted.

Of a sudden, the oft-told family tales to which she had listened

since babyhood, listened half-bored, impatient and but partly

comprehending, were crystal clear. Gerald, penniless, had raised

Tara; Ellen had risen above some mysterious sorrow; Grandfather

Robillard, surviving the wreck of Napoleon's throne, had founded

his fortunes anew on the fertile Georgia coast; Great-grandfather

Prudhomme had carved a small kingdom out of the dark jungles of

Haiti, lost it, and lived to see his name honored in Savannah.

There were the Scarletts who had fought with the Irish Volunteers

for a free Ireland and been hanged for their pains and the O'Haras

who died at the Boyne, battling to the end for what was theirs.

All had suffered crushing misfortunes and had not been crushed.

They had not been broken by the crash of empires, the machetes of

revolting slaves, war, rebellion, proscription, confiscation.

Malign fate had broken their necks, perhaps, but never their

hearts. They had not whined, they had fought. And when they died,

they died spent but unquenched. All of those shadowy folks whose

blood flowed in her veins seemed to move quietly in the moonlit

room. And Scarlett was not surprised to see them, these kinsmen

who had taken the worst that fate could send and hammered it into

the best. Tara was her fate, her fight, and she must conquer it.

She turned drowsily on her side, a slow creeping blackness

enveloping her mind. Were they really there, whispering wordless

encouragement to her, or was this part of her dream?

"Whether you are there or not," she murmured sleepily, "good night--

and thank you."

CHAPTER XXV

The next morning Scarlett's body was so stiff and sore from the

long miles of walking and jolting in the wagon that every movement

was agony. Her face was crimson with sunburn and her blistered

palms raw. Her tongue was furred and her throat parched as if

flames had scorched it and no amount of water could assuage her

thirst. Her head felt swollen and she winced even when she turned

her eyes. A queasiness of the stomach reminiscent of the early

days of her pregnancy made the smoking yams on the breakfast table

unendurable, even to the smell. Gerald could have told her she was

suffering the normal aftermath of her first experience with hard

drinking but Gerald noticed nothing. He sat at the head of the

table, a gray old man with absent, faded eyes fastened on the door

and head cocked slightly to hear the rustle of Ellen's petticoats,

to smell the lemon verbena sachet.

As Scarlett sat down, he mumbled: "We will wait for Mrs. O'Hara.

She is late." She raised an aching head, looked at him with

startled incredulity and met the pleading eyes of Mammy, who stood

behind Gerald's chair. She rose unsteadily, her hand at her throat

and looked down at her father in the morning sunlight. He peered

up at her vaguely and she saw that his hands were shaking, that his

head trembled a little.

Until this moment she had not realized how much she had counted on

Gerald to take command, to tell her what she must do, and now--

Why, last night he had seemed almost himself. There had been none

of his usual bluster and vitality, but at least he had told a

connected story and now--now, he did not even remember Ellen was

dead. The combined shock of the coming of the Yankees and her

death had stunned him. She started to speak, but Mammy shook her

head vehemently and raising her apron dabbed at her red eyes.

"Oh, can Pa have lost his mind?" thought Scarlett and her throbbing

head felt as if it would crack with this added strain. "No, no.

He's just dazed by it all. It's like he was sick. He'll get over