Chapter - 28 | Gone with the Wind

-eight
COLD WEATHER SET IN ABRUPTLY with a killing frost. Chilling winds swept
beneath the doorsills and rattled the loose windowpanes with a
monotonous tinkling sound. The last of the leaves fell from the bare trees
and only the pines stood clothed, black and cold against pale skies. The
rutted red roads were frozen to ﬂintiness and hunger rode the winds
through Georgia.
Scarlett recalled bitterly her conversation with Grandma Fontaine. On
that afternoon two months ago, which now seemed years in the past, she
had told the old lady she had already known the worst which could possibly
happen to her, and she had spoken from the bottom of her heart. Now that
remark sounded like schoolgirl hyperbole. Before Sherman’s men came
through Tara the second time, she had her small riches of food and money,
she had neighbors more fortunate than she and she had the cotton which
would tide her over until spring. Now the cotton was gone, the food was
gone, the money was of no use to her, for there was no food to buy with it,
and the neighbors were in worse plight than she. At least, she had the cow
and the calf, a few shoats and the horse, and the neighbors had nothing but
the little they had been able to hide in the woods and bury in the ground.
Fairhill, the Tarleton home, was burned to the foundations, and Mrs.
Tarleton and the four girls were existing in the overseer’s house. The
Munroe house near Lovejoy was leveled too. The wooden wing of Mimosa
had burned and only the thick resistant stucco of the main house and the
frenzied work of the Fontaine women and their slaves with wet blankets
and quilts had saved it. The Calverts’ house had again been spared, due to
the intercession of Hilton, the Yankee overseer, but there was not a head of
livestock, not a fowl, not an ear of corn left on the place.
At Tara and throughout the County, the problem was food. Most of the
families had nothing at all but the remains of their yam crops and their

peanuts and such game as they could catch in the woods. What they had,
each shared with less fortunate friends, as they had done in more
prosperous days. But the time soon came when there was nothing to share.
At Tara, they ate rabbit and possum and catﬁsh, if Pork was lucky. On
other days a small amount of milk, hickory nuts, roasted acorns and yams.
They were always hungry. To Scarlett it seemed that at every turn she met
outstretched hands, pleading eyes. The sight of them drove her almost to
madness, for she was as hungry as they.
She ordered the calf killed, because he drank so much of the precious
milk, and that night everyone ate so much fresh veal all of them were ill.
She knew that she should kill one of the shoats but she put it off from day
to day, hoping to raise them to maturity. They were so small. There would
be so little of them to eat if they were killed now and so much more if they
could be saved a little longer. Nightly she debated with Melanie the
advisability of sending Pork abroad on the horse with some greenbacks to
try to buy food. But the fear that the horse might be captured and the
money taken from Pork deterred them. They did not know where the
Yankees were. They might be a thousand miles away or only across the
river. Once, Scarlett, in desperation, started to ride out herself to search for
food, but the hysterical outbursts of the whole family fearful of the Yankees
made her abandon the plan.
Pork foraged far, at times not coming home all night, and Scarlett did
not ask him where he went. Sometimes he returned with game, sometimes
with a few ears of corn, a bag of dried peas. Once he brought home a
rooster which he said he found in the woods. The family ate it with relish
but a sense of guilt, knowing very well Pork had stolen it, as he had stolen
the peas and corn. One night soon after this, he tapped on Scarlett’s door
long after the house was asleep and sheepishly exhibited a leg peppered
with small shot. As she bandaged it for him, he explained awkwardly that
when attempting to get into a hen coop at Fayetteville, he had been
discovered. Scarlett did not ask whose hen coop but patted Pork’s shoulder
gently, tears in her eyes. Negroes were provoking sometimes and stupid and
lazy, but there was loyalty in them that money couldn’t buy, a feeling of
oneness with their white folks which made them risk their lives to keep
food on the table.

In other days Pork’s pilferings would have been a serious matter,
probably calling for a whipping. In other days she would have been forced
at least to reprimand him severely. “Always remember, dear,” Ellen had
said, “you are responsible for the moral as well as the physical welfare of the
darkies God has intrusted to your care. You must realize that they are like
children and must be guarded from themselves like children, and you must
always set them a good example.”
But now, Scarlett pushed that admonition into the back of her mind.
That she was encouraging theft, and perhaps theft from people worse off
than she, was no longer a matter for conscience. In fact the morals of the
affair weighed lightly upon her. Instead of punishment or reproof, she only
regretted he had been shot.
“You must be more careful, Pork. We don’t want to lose you. What
would we do without you? You’ve been mighty good and faithful and when
we get some money again, I’m going to buy you a big gold watch and
engrave on it something out of the Bible, ‘Well done, good and faithful
servant.’”
Pork beamed under the praise and gingerly rubbed his bandaged leg.
“Dat soun’ mighty ﬁne, Miss Scarlett. W’en you speckin’ ter git dat
money?”
“I don’t know, Pork, but I’m going to get it some time, somehow.” She
bent on him an unseeing glance that was so passionately bitter he stirred
uneasily. “Some day, when this war is over, I’m going to have lots of money,
and when I do I’ll never be hungry or cold again. None of us will ever be
hungry or cold. We’ll all wear ﬁne clothes and have fried chicken every day
and—”
Then she stopped. The strictest rule at Tara, one which she herself had
made and which she rigidly enforced, was that no one should ever talk of
the ﬁne meals they had eaten in the past or what they would eat now, if
they had the opportunity.
Pork slipped from the room as she remained staring moodily into the
distance. In the old days, now dead and gone, life had been so complex, so
full of intricate and complicated problems. There had been the problem of
trying to win Ashley’s love and trying to keep a dozen other beaux dangling
and unhappy. There had been small breaches of conduct to be concealed
from her elders, jealous girls to be ﬂouted or placated, styles of dresses and

materials to be chosen, different coiffures to be tried and, oh, so many,
many other matters to be decided! Now life was so amazingly simple. Now
all that mattered was food enough to keep off starvation, clothing enough
to prevent freezing and a roof overhead which did not leak too much.
It was during these days that Scarlett dreamed and dreamed again the
nightmare which was to haunt her for years. It was always the same dream,
the details never varied, but the terror of it mounted each time it came to
her and the fear of experiencing it again troubled even her waking hours.
She remembered so well the incidents of the day when she had ﬁrst
dreamed it.
Cold rain had fallen for days and the house was chill with drafts and
dampness. The logs in the ﬁreplace were wet and smoky and gave little
heat. There had been nothing to eat except milk since breakfast, for the
yams were exhausted and Pork’s snares and ﬁshlines had yielded nothing.
One of the shoats would have to be killed the next day if they were to eat
at all. Strained and hungry faces, black and white, were staring at her,
mutely asking her to provide food. She would have to risk losing the horse
and send Pork out to buy something. And to make matters worse, Wade
was ill with a sore throat and a raging fever and there was neither doctor
nor medicine for him.
Hungry, weary with watching her child, Scarlett left him to Melanie’s
care for a while and lay down on her bed to nap. Her feet icy, she twisted
and turned, unable to sleep, weighed down with fear and despair. Again
and again, she thought: “What shall I do? Where shall I turn? Isn’t there
anybody in the world who can help me?” Where had all the security of the
world gone? Why wasn’t there someone, some strong wise person to take
the burdens from her? She wasn’t made to carry them. She did not know
how to carry them. And then she fell into an uneasy doze.
She was in a wild strange country so thick with swirling mist she could
not see her hand before her face. The earth beneath her feet was uneasy. It
was a haunted land, still with a terrible stillness, and she was lost in it, lost
and terriﬁed as a child in the night. She was bitterly cold and hungry and
so fearful of what lurked in the mists about her that she tried to scream and
could not. There were things in the fog reaching out ﬁngers to pluck at her
skirt, to drag her down into the uneasy quaking earth on which she stood,
silent, relentless, spectral hands. Then, she knew that somewhere in the

opaque gloom about her there was shelter, help, a haven of refuge and
warmth. But where was it? Could she reach it before the hands clutched
her and dragged her down into the quicksands?
Suddenly she was running, running through the mist like a mad thing,
crying and screaming, throwing out her arms to clutch only empty air and
wet mist. Where was the haven? It eluded her but it was there, hidden,
somewhere. If she could only reach it! If she could only reach it she would
be safe! But terror was weakening her legs, hunger making her faint. She
gave one despairing cry and awoke to ﬁnd Melanie’s worried face above her
and Melanie’s hand shaking her to wakefulness.
The dream returned again and again, whenever she went to sleep with
an empty stomach. And that was frequently enough. It so frightened her
that she feared to sleep, although she feverishly told herself there was
nothing in such a dream to be afraid of. There was nothing in a dream
about fog to scare her so. Nothing at all—yet the thought of dropping off
into that mist-ﬁlled country so terriﬁed her she began sleeping with
Melanie, who would wake her up when her moaning and twitching
revealed that she was again in the clutch of the dream.
Under the strain she grew white and thin. The pretty roundness left her
face, throwing her cheek bones into prominence, emphasizing her slanting
green eyes and giving her the look of a prowling, hungry cat.
“Daytime is enough like a nightmare without my dreaming things,” she
thought desperately and began hoarding her daily ration to eat it just
before she went to sleep.
* * *
At Christmas time Frank Kennedy and a small troop from the commissary
department jogged up to Tara on a futile hunt for grain and animals for the
army. They were a ragged and rufﬁanly appearing crew, mounted on lame
and heaving horses which obviously were in too bad condition to be used
for more active service. Like their animals the men had been invalided out
of the front-line forces and, except for Frank, all of them had an arm
missing or an eye gone or stiffened joints. Most of them wore blue

overcoats of captured Yankees and, for a brief instant of horror, those at
Tara thought Sherman’s men had returned.
They stayed the night on the plantation, sleeping on the ﬂoor in the
parlor, luxuriating as they stretched themselves on the velvet rug, for it had
been weeks since they had slept under a roof or on anything softer than
pine needles and hard earth. For all their dirty beards and tatters they were
a well-bred crowd, full of pleasant small talk, jokes and compliments and
very glad to be spending Christmas Eve in a big house, surrounded by
pretty women as they had been accustomed to do in days long past. They
refused to be serious about the war, told outrageous lies to make the girls
laugh and brought to the bare and looted house the ﬁrst lightness, the ﬁrst
hint of festivity it had known in many a day.
“It’s almost like the old days when we had house parties, isn’t it?”
whispered Suellen happily to Scarlett. Suellen was raised to the skies by
having a beau of her own in the house again and she could hardly take her
eyes off Frank Kennedy. Scarlett was surprised to see that Suellen could be
almost pretty, despite the thinness which had persisted since her illness.
Her cheeks were ﬂushed and there was a soft luminous look in her eyes.
“She really must care about him,” thought Scarlett in contempt. “And I
guess she’d be almost human if she ever had a husband of her own, even if
her husband was old fuss-budget Frank.”
Carreen had brightened a little too, and some of the sleepwalking look
left her eyes that night. She had found that one of the men had known
Brent Tarleton and had been with him the day he was killed, and she
promised herself a long private talk with him after supper.
At supper Melanie surprised them all by forcing herself out of her
timidity and being almost vivacious. She laughed and joked and almost but
not quite coquetted with a one-eyed soldier who gladly repaid her efforts
with extravagant gallantries. Scarlett knew the effort this involved both
mentally and physically, for Melanie suffered torments of shyness in the
presence of anything male. Moreover she was far from well. She insisted
she was strong and did more work even than Dilcey but Scarlett knew she
was sick. When she lifted things her face went white and she had a way of
sitting down suddenly after exertions, as if her legs would no longer support
her. But tonight, she, like Suellen and Carreen, was doing everything

possible to make the soldiers enjoy their Christmas Eve. Scarlett alone took
no pleasure in the guests.
The troop had added their ration of parched corn and side meat to the
supper of dried peas, stewed dried apples and peanuts which Mammy set
before them and they declared it was the best meal they had had in
months. Scarlett watched them eat and she was uneasy. She not only
begrudged them every mouthful they ate but she was on tenterhooks lest
they discover somehow that Pork had slaughtered one of the shoats the day
before. It now hung in the pantry and she had grimly promised her
household that she would scratch out the eyes of anyone who mentioned
the shoat to their guests or the presence of the dead pig’s sisters and
brothers, safe in their pen in the swamp. These hungry men could devour
the whole shoat at one meal and, if they knew of the live hogs, they could
commandeer them for the army. She was alarmed, too, for the cow and the
horse and wished they were hidden in the swamp, instead of tied in the
woods at the bottom of the pasture. If the commissary took her stock, Tara
could not possibly live through the winter. There would be no way of
replacing them. As to what the army would eat, she did not care. Let the
army feed the army—if it could. It was hard enough for her to feed her
own.
The men added as dessert some “ramrod rolls” from their knapsacks, and
this was the ﬁrst time Scarlett had ever seen this Confederate article of diet
about which there were almost as many jokes as about lice. They were
charred spirals of what appeared to be wood. The men dared her to take a
bite and, when she did, she discovered that beneath the smoke-blackened
surface was unsalted corn bread. The soldiers mixed their ration of corn
meal with water, and salt too when they could get it, wrapped the thick
paste about their ramrods and roasted the mess over camp ﬁres. It was as
hard as rock candy and as tasteless as sawdust and after one bite Scarlett
hastily handed it back amid roars of laughter. She met Melanie’s eyes and
the same thought was plain in both faces…. “How can they go on ﬁghting
if they have only this stuff to eat?”
The meal was gay enough and even Gerald, presiding absently at the
head of the table, managed to evoke from the back of his dim mind some of
the manner of a host and an uncertain smile. The men talked, the women
smiled and ﬂattered—but Scarlett turning suddenly to Frank Kennedy to

ask him news of Miss Pittypat, caught an expression on his face which
made her forget what she intended to say.
His eyes had left Suellen’s and were wandering about the room, to
Gerald’s childlike puzzled eyes, to the ﬂoor, bare of rugs, to the mantelpiece
denuded of its ornaments, the sagging springs and torn upholstery into
which Yankee bayonets had ripped, the cracked mirror above the
sideboard, the unfaded squares on the wall where pictures had hung before
the looters came, the scant table service, the decently mended but old
dresses of the girls, the ﬂour sack which had been made into a kilt for
Wade.
Frank was remembering the Tara he had known before the war and on
his face was a hurt look, a look of tired impotent anger. He loved Suellen,
liked her sisters, respected Gerald and had a genuine fondness for the
plantation. Since Sherman had swept through Georgia, Frank had seen
many appalling sights as he rode about the state trying to collect supplies,
but nothing had gone to his heart as Tara did now. He wanted to do
something for the O’Haras, especially Suellen, and there was nothing he
could do. He was unconsciously wagging his whiskered head in pity and
clicking his tongue against his teeth when Scarlett caught his eye. He saw
the ﬂame of indignant pride in them and he dropped his gaze quickly to his
plate in embarrassment.
The girls were hungry for news. There had been no mail service since
Atlanta fell, now four months past, and they were in complete ignorance as
to where the Yankees were, how the Confederate Army was faring, what
had happened to Atlanta and to old friends. Frank, whose work took him
all over the section, was as good as a newspaper, better even, for he was kin
to or knew almost everyone from Macon north to Atlanta, and he could
supply bits of interesting personal gossip which the papers always omitted.
To cover his embarrassment at being caught by Scarlett, he plunged hastily
into a recital of news. The Confederates, he told them, had retaken
Atlanta after Sherman marched out, but it was a valueless prize as Sherman
had burned it completely.
“But I thought Atlanta burned the night I left,” cried Scarlett,
bewildered. “I thought our boys burned it!”
“Oh, no, Miss Scarlett!” cried Frank, shocked. “We’d never burn one of
our own towns with our own folks in it! What you saw burning was the

warehouses and the supplies we didn’t want the Yankees to capture and the
foundries and the ammunition. But that was all. When Sherman took the
town the houses and stores were standing there as pretty as you please. And
he quartered his men in them.”
“But what happened to the people? Did he—did he kill them?”
“He killed some—but not with bullets,” said the one-eyed soldier grimly.
“Soon’s he marched into Atlanta he told the mayor that all the people in
town would have to march out, every living soul. And there were plenty of
old folks that couldn’t stand the trip and sick folks that ought not to have
been moved either. And he moved them out in the biggest rainstorm you
ever saw, hundreds and hundreds of them, and dumped them in the woods
near Rough and Ready and sent word to General Hood to come and get
them. And a plenty of the folks died of pneumonia and not being able to
stand that sort of treatment.”
“Oh, but why did he do that? They couldn’t have done him any harm,”
cried Melanie.
“He said he wanted the town to rest his men and horses in,” said Frank.
“And he rested them there till the middle of November and then he lit out.
And he set ﬁre to the whole town when he left and burned everything.”
“Oh, surely not everything!” cried the girls in dismay.
It was inconceivable that the bustling town they knew, so full of people,
so crowded with soldiers, was gone. All the lovely homes beneath shady
trees, all the big stores and the ﬁne hotels—surely they couldn’t be gone!
Melanie seemed ready to burst into tears, for she had been born there and
knew no other home. Scarlett’s heart sank because she had come to love
the place second only to Tara.
“Well, almost everything,” Frank amended hastily, disturbed by the
expressions on their faces. He tried to look cheerful, for he did not believe
in upsetting ladies. Upset ladies always upset him and made him feel
helpless. He could not bring himself to tell them the worst. Let them ﬁnd
out from some one else.
He could not tell them what the army saw when it marched back into
Atlanta, the acres and acres of chimneys standing blackly above ashes, piles
of half-burned rubbish and tumbled heaps of brick clogging the streets, old
trees dying from ﬁre, their charred limbs tumbling to the ground in the cold
wind. He remembered how the sight had turned him sick, remembered the

bitter curses of the Confederates when they saw the remains of the town.
He hoped the ladies would never hear of the horrors of the looted
cemetery, for they’d never get over that. Charlie Hamilton and Melanie’s
mother and father were buried there. The sight of that cemetery still gave
Frank nightmares. Hoping to ﬁnd jewelry buried with the dead, the Yankee
soldiers had broken open vaults, dug up graves. They had robbed the
bodies, stripped from the cofﬁns gold and silver name plates, silver
trimmings and silver handles. The skeletons and corpses, ﬂung helter-
skelter among their splintered caskets, lay exposed and so pitiful.
And Frank couldn’t tell them about the dogs and the cats. Ladies set
such a store by pets. But the thousands of starving animals, left homeless
when their masters had been so rudely evacuated, had shocked him almost
as much as the cemetery, for Frank loved cats and dogs. The animals had
been frightened, cold, ravenous, wild as forest creatures, the strong
attacking the weak, the weak waiting for the weaker to die so they could
eat them. And, above the ruined town, the buzzards splotched the wintry
sky with graceful, sinister bodies.
Frank cast about in his mind for some mitigating information that would
make the ladies feel better.
“There’s some houses still standing,” he said, “houses that set on big lots
away from other houses and didn’t catch ﬁre. And the churches and the
Masonic hall are left. And a few stores too. But the business section and all
along the railroad tracks and at Five Points—well, ladies, that part of town
is ﬂat on the ground.”
“Then,” cried Scarlett bitterly, “that warehouse Charlie left me, down
on the tracks, it’s gone too?”
“If it was near the tracks, it’s gone, but—” Suddenly he smiled. Why
hadn’t he thought of it before? “Cheer up, ladies! Your Aunt Pitty’s house is
still standing. It’s kind of damaged but there it is.”
“Oh, how did it escape?”
“Well, it’s made of brick and it’s got about the only slate roof in Atlanta
and that kept the sparks from setting it aﬁre, I guess. And then it’s about
the last house on the north end of town and the ﬁre wasn’t so bad over that
way. Of course, the Yankees quartered there tore it up aplenty. They even
burned the baseboard and the mahogany stair rail for ﬁrewood, but shucks!
It’s in good shape. When I saw Miss Pitty last week in Macon—”

“You saw her? How is she?”
“Just ﬁne. Just ﬁne. When I told her her house was still standing, she
made up her mind to come home right away. That is—if the old darky,
Peter, will let her come. Lots of the Atlanta people have already come
back, because they got nervous about Macon. Sherman didn’t take Macon
but everybody is afraid Wilson’s raiders will get there soon and he’s worse
than Sherman.”
“But how silly of them to come back if there aren’t any houses! Where
do they live?”
“Miss Scarlett, they’re living in tents and shacks and log cabins and
doubling up six and seven families in the few houses still standing. And
they’re trying to rebuild. Now, Miss Scarlett, don’t say they are silly. You
know Atlanta folks as well as I do. They are plumb set on that town, most
as bad as Charlestonians are about Charleston, and it’ll take more than
Yankees and a burning to keep them away. Atlanta folks are—begging your
pardon, Miss Melly—as stubborn as mules about Atlanta. I don’t know
why, for I always thought that town a mighty pushy, impudent sort of place.
But then, I’m a countryman born and I don’t like any town. And let me tell
you, the ones who are getting back ﬁrst are the smart ones. The ones who
come back last won’t ﬁnd a stick or stone or brick of their houses, because
everybody’s out salvaging things all over town to rebuild their houses. Just
day before yesterday, I saw Mrs. Merriwether and Miss Maybelle and their
old darky woman out collecting brick in a wheelbarrow. And Mrs. Meade
told me she was thinking about building a log cabin when the doctor comes
back to help her. She said she lived in a log cabin when she ﬁrst came to
Atlanta, when it was Marthasville, and it wouldn’t bother her none to do it
again. ’Course, she was only joking but that shows you how they feel about
it.”
“I think they’ve got a lot of spirit,” said Melanie proudly. “Don’t you,
Scarlett?”
Scarlett nodded, a grim pleasure and pride in her adopted town ﬁlling
her. As Frank said, it was a pushy, impudent place and that was why she
liked it. It wasn’t hidebound and stick-in-the-muddish like the older towns
and it had a brash exuberance that matched her own. “I’m like Atlanta,”
she thought. “It takes more than Yankees or a burning to keep me down.”

“If Aunt Pitty is going back to Atlanta, we’d better go back and stay
with her, Scarlett,” said Melanie, interrupting her train of thought. “She’ll
die of fright alone.”
“Now, how can I leave here, Melly?” Scarlett asked crossly. “If you are so
anxious to go, go. I won’t stop you.”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, darling,” cried Melanie, ﬂushing with
distress. “How thoughtless of me! Of course, you can’t leave Tara and—and
I guess Uncle Peter and Cookie can take care of Auntie.”
“There’s nothing to keep you from going,” Scarlett pointed out, shortly.
“You know I wouldn’t leave you,” answered Melanie. “And I—I would
be just frightened to death without you.”
“Suit yourself. Besides, you wouldn’t catch me going back to Atlanta.
Just as soon as they get a few houses up, Sherman will come back and burn
it again.”
“He won’t be back,” said Frank and, despite his efforts, his face drooped.
“He’s gone on through the state to the coast. Savannah was captured this
week and they say the Yankees are going on up into South Carolina.”
“Savannah taken!”
“Yes. Why, ladies, Savannah couldn’t help but fall. They didn’t have
enough men to hold it, though they used every man they could get—every
man who could drag one foot after another. Do you know that when the
Yankees were marching on Milledgeville, they called out all the cadets
from the military academies, no matter how young they were, and even
opened the state penitentiary to get fresh troops? Yes, sir, they turned loose
every convict who was willing to ﬁght and promised him a pardon if he
lived through the war. It kind of gave me the creeps to see those little
cadets in the ranks with thieves and cutthroats.”
“They turned loose the convicts on us!”
“Now, Miss Scarlett, don’t you get upset. They’re a long way off from
here, and furthermore they’re making good soldiers. I guess being a thief
don’t keep a man from being a good soldier, does it?”
“I think it’s wonderful,” said Melanie softly.
“Well, I don’t,” said Scarlett ﬂatly. “There’s thieves enough running
around the country anyway, what with the Yankees and—” She caught
herself in time but the men laughed.

“What with Yankees and our commissary department,” they ﬁnished and
she ﬂushed.
“But where’s General Hood’s army?” interposed Melanie hastily. “Surely
he could have held Savannah.”
“Why, Miss Melanie,” Frank was startled and reproachful, “General
Hood hasn’t been down in that section at all. He’s been ﬁghting up in
Tennessee, trying to draw the Yankees out of Georgia.”
“And didn’t his little scheme work well!” cried Scarlett sarcastically.
“He left the damn Yankees to go through us with nothing but schoolboys
and convicts and Home Guards to protect us.”
“Daughter,” said Gerald rousing himself, “you are profane. Your mother
will be grieved.”
“They are damn Yankees!” cried Scarlett passionately. “And I never
expect to call them anything else.”
At the mention of Ellen everyone felt queer and conversation suddenly
ceased. Melanie again interposed.
“When you were in Macon did you see India and Honey Wilkes? Did
they—had they heard anything of Ashley?”
“Now, Miss Melly, you know if I’d had news of Ashley, I’d have ridden
up here from Macon right away to tell you,” said Frank reproachfully. “No,
they didn’t have any news but—now, don’t you fret about Ashley, Miss
Melly. I know it’s been a long time since you heard from him, but you can’t
expect to hear from a fellow when he’s in prison, can you? And things
aren’t as bad in Yankee prisons as they are in ours. After all, the Yankees
have plenty to eat and enough medicine and blankets. They aren’t like we
are—not having enough to feed ourselves, much less our prisoners.”
“Oh, the Yankees have got plenty,” cried Melanie, passionately bitter.
“But they don’t give things to the prisoners. You know they don’t, Mr.
Kennedy. You are just saying that to make me feel better. You know that
our boys freeze to death up there and starve too and die without doctors
and medicine, simply because the Yankees hate us so much! Oh, if we
could just wipe every Yankee off the face of the earth! Oh, I know that
Ashley is—”
“Don’t say it!” cried Scarlett, her heart in her throat. As long as no one
said Ashley was dead, there persisted in her heart a faint hope that he

lived, but she felt that if she heard the words pronounced, in that moment
he would die.
“Now, Mrs. Wilkes, don’t you bother about your husband,” said the one-
eyed man soothingly. “I was captured after ﬁrst Manassas and exchanged
later and when I was in prison, they fed me off the fat of the land, fried
chicken and hot biscuits—”
“I think you are a liar,” said Melanie with a faint smile and the ﬁrst sign
of spirit Scarlett had seen her display with a man. “What do you think?”
“I think so too,” said the one-eyed man and slapped his leg with a laugh.
“If you’ll all come into the parlor, I’ll sing you some Christmas carols,”
said Melanie, glad to change the subject. “The piano was one thing the
Yankees couldn’t carry away. Is it terribly out of tune, Suellen?”
“Dreadfully,” answered Suellen, happily beckoning with a smile to
Frank.
But as they all passed from the room, Frank hung back, tugging at
Scarlett’s sleeve.
“May I speak to you alone?”
For an awful moment she feared he was going to ask about her livestock
and she braced herself for a good lie.
When the room was cleared and they stood by the ﬁre, all the false
cheerfulness which had colored Frank’s face in front of the others passed
and she saw that he looked like an old man. His face was as dried and
brown as the leaves that were blowing about the lawn of Tara and his
ginger-colored whiskers were thin and scraggly and streaked with gray. He
clawed at them absently and cleared his throat in an annoying way before
he spoke.
“I’m mighty sorry about your ma, Miss Scarlett.”
“Please don’t talk about it.”
“And your pa—Has he been this way since—?”
“Yes—he’s—he’s not himself, as you can see.”
“He sure set a store by her.”
“Oh, Mr. Kennedy, please don’t let’s talk—”
“I’m sorry, Miss Scarlett,” and he shufﬂed his feet nervously. “The truth
is I wanted to take up something with your pa and now I see it won’t do
any good.”

“Perhaps I can help you, Mr. Kennedy. You see—I’m the head of the
house now.”
“Well, I,” began Frank and again clawed nervously at his beard. “The
truth is—Well, Miss Scarlett, I was aiming to ask him for Miss Suellen.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” cried Scarlett in amused amazement, “that
you haven’t yet asked Pa for Suellen? And you’ve been courting her for
years!”
He ﬂushed and grinned embarrassedly and in general looked like a shy
and sheepish boy.
“Well, I—I didn’t know if she’d have me. I’m so much older than she is
and—there were so many good-looking young bucks hanging around Tara
—”
“Humph!” thought Scarlett, “they were hanging around me, not her!”
“And I don’t know yet if she’ll have me. I’ve never asked her but she
must know how I feel. I—I thought I’d ask Mr. O’Hara’s permission and tell
him the truth. Miss Scarlett, I haven’t got a cent now. I used to have a lot
of money, if you’ll forgive me mentioning it, but right now all I own is my
horse and the clothes I’ve got on. You see, when I enlisted I sold most of
my land and I put all my money in Confederate bonds and you know what
they’re worth now. Less than the paper they’re printed on. And anyway, I
haven’t got them now, because they burned up when the Yankees burned
my sister’s house. I know I’ve got gall asking for Miss Suellen now when I
haven’t a cent but—well, it’s this way. I got to thinking that we don’t know
how things are going to turn out about this war. It sure looks like the end of
the world to me. There’s nothing we can be sure of and—and I thought it
would be a heap of comfort to me and maybe to her if we were engaged.
That would be something sure. I wouldn’t ask to marry her till I could take
care of her, Miss Scarlett, and I don’t know when that will be. But if true
love carries any weight with you, you can be certain Miss Suellen will be
rich in that if nothing else.”
He spoke the last words with a simple dignity that touched Scarlett,
even in her amusement. It was beyond her comprehension that anyone
could love Suellen. Her sister seemed to her a monster of selﬁshness, of
complaints and of what she could only describe as pure cussedness.
“Why, Mr. Kennedy,” she said kindly, “it’s quite all right. I’m sure I can
speak for Pa. He always set a store by you and he always expected Suellen

to marry you.”
“Did he now?” cried Frank, happiness in his face.
“Indeed yes,” answered Scarlett, concealing a grin as she remembered
how frequently Gerald had rudely bellowed across the supper table to
Suellen: “How now, Missy! Hasn’t your ardent beau popped the question
yet? Shall I be asking him his intentions?”
“I shall ask her tonight,” he said, his face quivering, and he clutched her
hand and shook it. “You’re so kind, Miss Scarlett.”
“I’ll send her to you,” smiled Scarlett, starting for the parlor. Melanie
was beginning to play. The piano was sadly out of tune but some of the
chords were musical and Melanie was raising her voice to lead the others in
“Hark, the Herald Angels Sing!”
Scarlett paused. It did not seem possible that war had swept over them
twice, that they were living in a ravaged country, close to the border of
starvation, when this old sweet Christmas hymn was being sung. Abruptly
she turned to Frank.
“What did you mean when you said it looked like the end of the world
to you?”
“I’ll talk frankly,” he said slowly, “but I wouldn’t want you to be alarming
the other ladies with what I say. The war can’t go on much longer. There
aren’t any fresh men to ﬁll the ranks and the desertions are running high—
higher than the army likes to admit. You see, the men can’t stand to be
away from their families when they know they’re starving, so they go home
to try to provide for them. I can’t blame them but it weakens the army.
And the army can’t ﬁght without food and there isn’t any food. I know
because, you see, getting food is my business. I’ve been all up and down this
section since we retook Atlanta and there isn’t enough to feed a jaybird. It’s
the same way for three hundred miles south to Savannah. The folks are
starving and the railroads are torn up and there aren’t any new riﬂes and
the ammunition is giving out and there’s no leather at all for shoes…. So,
you see, the end is almost here.”
But the fading hopes of the Confederacy weighed less heavily on
Scarlett than his remark about the scarcity of food. It had been her
intention to send Pork out with the horse and wagon, the gold pieces and
the United States money to scour the countryside for provisions and
material for clothes. But if what Frank said was true—

But Macon hadn’t fallen. There must be food in Macon. Just as soon as
the commissary department was safely on its way, she’d start Pork for
Macon and take the chance of having the precious horse picked up by the
army. She’d have to risk it.
“Well, let’s don’t talk about unpleasant things tonight, Mr. Kennedy,”
she said. “You go and sit in Mother’s little ofﬁce and I’ll send Suellen to you
so you can—well, so you’ll have a little privacy.”
Blushing, smiling, Frank slipped out of the room and Scarlett watched
him go.
“What a pity he can’t marry her now,” she thought. “That would be one
less mouth to feed.”