wondered if Melanie, in the midst of mourning for the lost Cause, had thought of this.
"Soon we'll get a letter--no, not a letter. We can't get letters. But soon--oh, somehow he'll let us know!"
But the days passed into weeks and there was no news from Ashley. The mail service in
the South was uncertain and in the rural districts there was none at all. Occasionally a passing traveler from Atlanta brought a note from Aunt Pitty tearfully begging the girls to come back. But never news of Ashley.
After the surrender, an ever-present feud over the horse smoldered between Scarlett and
Suellen. Now that there was no danger of Yankees, Suellen wanted to go calling on the
neighbors. Lonely and missing the happy sociability of the old days, Suellen longed to visit friends, if for no other reason than to assure herself that the rest of the County was as bad off as Tara. But Scarlett was adamant. The horse was for work, to drag logs from the woods, to plow and for Pork to ride in search of food. On Sundays he had earned the right to graze in the pasture and rest. If Suellen wanted to go visiting she could go afoot.
Before the last year Suellen had never walked a hundred yards in her life and this prospect was anything but pleasing:' So she stayed at home and nagged and cried and said, once too often:
"Oh, if only Mother was here!" At that, Scarlett gave her the long-promised slap, hitting her so hard it knocked her screaming to the bed and caused great consternation throughout the house.
Thereafter, Suellen whined the less, at least in Scarlett's presence.
Scarlett spoke truthfully when she said she wanted the horse to rest but that was only half of the truth. The other half was that she had paid one round of calls on the County in the first
month after the surrender and the sight of old friends and old plantations had shaken her courage more than she liked to admit.
The Fontaines had fared best of any, thanks to Sally's hard ride, but it was flourishing
only by comparison with the desperate situation of the other neighbors. Grandma Fontaine had never completely recovered from the heart attack she had the day she led the others in beating out the flames and saving the house. Old Dr. Fontaine was convalescing slowly from an amputated arm. Alex andTony were turning awkward hands to plows and hoe handles. They leaned over the fence rail to shake hands with Scarlett when she called and they laughed at her rickety wagon, their black eyes bitter, for they were laughing at themselves as well as her. She asked to buy seed corn from them and they promised it and fell to discussing farm problems. They had twelve chickens, two cows, five hogs and the mule they brought home from the war. One of the hogs had just died and they were worried about losing the others. At bearing such serious words about hogs from these ex-dandies who had never given life a more serious thought than which cravat was most fashionable, Scarlett laughed and this time her laugh was bitter too.
They had all made her welcome at Mimosa and had insisted on giving, not selling, her the
seed corn. The quick Fontaine tempers flared when she put a greenback on the table and they flatly refused payment. Scarlett took the corn and privately slipped a dollar bill into Sally's hand.
Sally looked like a different person from the girl who had greeted her eight months before when Scarlett first came home to Tara. Then she had been pale and sad but there had been a buoyancy about her. Now that buoyancy had gone, as if the surrender had taken all hope from her.
"Scarlett," she whispered as she clutched the bill, "what was the good of it all? Why did we ever fight? Oh, my poor Joe! Oh, my poor baby!"
"I don't know why we fought and I don't care," said Scarlett, "And I'm not interested. I never was interested. War is a man's business, not a woman's. All I'm interested in now is a good cotton crop. Now take this dollar and buy little Joe a dress. God knows, he needs it. I'm not going to rob you of your corn, for all Alex and Tony's politeness."
The boys followed her to the wagon and assisted her in, courtly for all their rags, gay with the volatile Fontaine gaiety, but with the picture of their destitution in her eyes, she shivered as she drove away from Mimosa. She was so tired of poverty and pinching. What a pleasure it
would be to know people who were rich and not worried as to where the next meal was coming from!
Cade Calvert was at home at Pine Bloom and, as Scarlett came up the steps of the old
house in which she had danced so often in happier days, she saw that death was in his face. He was emaciated and he coughed as he lay in an easy chair in the sunshine with a shawl across his knees, but his face lit up when he saw her. Just a little cold which had settled in his chest, he said, trying to rise to greet her. Got it from sleeping so much in the rain. But it would be gone soon and then he'd lend a hand in the work.