Pork scurried from the room as her voice roughened and Scarlett was left alone with
Gerald. She patted his leg gently. She noted how shrunken were the thighs that once bulged with saddle muscles. She must do something to drag him from his apathy--but she could not ask about Mother. That must come later, when she could stand it.
"Why didn't they burn Tara?"
Gerald stared at her for a moment as if not hearing her and she repeated her question.
"Why--"he fumbled, "they used the house as a headquarters."
"Yankees--in this house?"
A feeling that the beloved walls had been defiled rose in her. This house, sacred because Ellen had lived in it, and those--those--in it.
"So they were, Daughter. We saw the smoke from Twelve Oaks, across the river, before they came. But Miss Honey and Miss India and some of their darkies had refugeed to Macon, so we did not worry about them. But we couldn't be going to Macon. The girls were so sick--your mother--we couldn't be going. Our darkies ran--I'm not knowing where. They stole the wagons and the mules. Mammy and Dilcey and Pork--they didn't run. The girls--your mother--we
couldn't be moving them.
"Yes, yes." He mustn't talk about Mother. Anything else. Even that General Sherman himself had used this room, Mother's office, for his headquarters. Anything else.
"The Yankees were moving on Jonesboro, to cut the railroad. And they came up the road from the river--thousands and thousands--and cannon and horses--thousands. I met them on the front porch."
"Oh, gallant little Gerald!" thought Scarlett, her heart swelling, Gerald meeting the enemy on the stairs of Tara as if an army stood behind him instead of in front of him.
"They said for me to leave, that they would be burning the place. And I said that they would be burning it over my head. We could not leave--the girls--your mother were--"
"And then?" Must he revert to Ellen always?
"I told them there was sickness in the house, the typhoid, and it was death to move them.
They could burn the roof over us. I did not want to leave anyway--leave Tara--"
His voice trailed off into silence as he looked absently about the walls and Scarlet!
understood. There were too many Irish ancestors crowding behind Gerald's shoulders, men who had died on scant acres, fighting to the end rather than leave the homes where they had lived, plowed, loved, begotten sons.
"I said that they would be burning the house over the heads of three dying women. But we would not leave. The young officer was--was a gentleman."
"A Yankee a gentleman? Why, Pa!"
"A gentleman. He galloped away and soon he was back with a captain, a surgeon, and he looked at the girls--and your mother."
"You let a damned Yankee into their room?"
"He had opium. We had none. He saved your sisters. Suellen was hemorrhaging. He was
as kind as he knew how. And when he reported that they were--ill--they did not burn the house.
They moved in, some general, his staff, crowding in. They filled all the rooms except the sick room. And the soldiers--"
He paused again, as if too tired to go on. His stubbly chin sank heavily in loose folds of flesh on his chest With an effort he spoke again.
They camped all round the house, everywhere, in the cotton, in the corn. The pasture was
blue with them. That night there were a thousand campfires. They tore down the fences and burned them to cook with and the barns and the stables and the smokehouse. They killed the cows and the hogs and the chickens--even my turkeys." Gerald's precious turkeys. So they were gone. They took things, even the pictures--some of the furniture, the china--"
"The silver?"
"Pork and Mammy did something with the silver--put it in the well--but I'm not
remembering now," Gerald's voice was fretful. "Then they fought the battle from here--from Tara--there was so much noise, people galloping up and stamping about. And later the cannon at Jonesboro--it sounded like thunder--even the girls could hear it, sick as they were, and they kept saying over and over: 'Papa, make it stop thundering.' "
"And--and Mother? Did she know Yankees were in the house?"
"She--never knew anything."
"Thank God," said Scarlett. Mother was spared that. Mother never knew, never heard the enemy in the rooms below, never heard the guns at Jonesboro, never learned that the land which was part of her heart was under Yankee feet.
"I saw few of them for I stayed upstairs with the girls and your mother. I saw the young surgeon mostly. He was kind, so kind, Scarlett. After he'd worked all day with the wounded, he came and sat with them. He even left some medicine. He told me when they moved on that the girls would recover but your mother--She was so frail, he said--too frail to stand it all. He said she had undermined her strength. …"