Her lips still felt warm from Rhett’s kiss. But the rest of her was shivering. She curled up in front of the fire with the quilt wrapped securely around her. She was tired, so very tired. She’d have a little nap until Rhett came back.

She slid into a sleep so profound that it was more nearly coma.


“Exhaustion,” said the army doctor Rhett brought back from Fort Moultrie, “and exposure. It’s a miracle your wife isn’t dead, Mr. Butler. Let’s hope she doesn’t lose the use of her legs; the circulation’s all but shut down. Wrap her in those blankets and let’s get her back to the fort.” Rhett swaddled Scarlett’s limp body quickly and lifted her in his arms.

“Here, now, give her to the sergeant. You’re not in such good condition yourself.”

Scarlett’s eyes opened. Her clouded mind registered the blue uniforms around her, then her eyes rolled back in her head. The doctor closed the eyelids with fingers practiced in battlefield medicine. “Better hurry,” he said, “she’s slipping away.”


“Drink this, honey.” It was a woman’s voice, soft yet authoritative, a voice she almost recognized. Scarlett opened her lips obediently. “That’s a good girl, take another little sip. No, I don’t want to see no ugly screwed-up face like that. Don’t you know if you make that kind of face it’s liable to stick? Then what’ll you do? A pretty little girl turned ugly. That’s better. Now open up. Wider. You going to drink this good hot milk and medicine if it takes all week. Come on, now, lamb. I’ll stir some more sugar in it.”

No, it wasn’t Mammy’s voice. So close, so nearly the same, but not the same. Weak tears seeped from the corners of Scarlett’s closed eyes. For a minute she’d thought she was home, at Tara, with Mammy tending her. She forced her eyes to open, to focus. The black woman bending over her smiled. Her smile was beautiful. Compassionate. Wise. Loving. Patient. Unyieldingly bossy. Scarlett smiled back.

“There, now, ain’t that just what I told them? What this little girl need, I say, is a hot brick in her bed and a mustard plaster on her chest and old Rebekah rubbing out the chill from her bones, with a milk toddy and a talk with Jesus to finish the cure. I done talk with Jesus while I rub, and He bring you back like I knowed He would. Lord, I tell Him, this ain’t no real work like Lazarus, this here is just a little girl feeling poorly. It won’t hardly take a minute of Your everlasting time to cast Your eye this way and bring her back.

“He done so, and I’m going to thank Him. Soon’s you finish drinking your milk. Come on, honey, there’s two fresh spoons of sugar in it. Drink it down. You don’t want to keep Jesus waiting for Rebekah to say thank You, do you? That don’t set too well in Heaven.”

Scarlett swallowed. Then she gulped. The sweetened milk tasted better than anything she’d tasted in weeks. When it was all gone she rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand to erase the milk mustache. “I’m mighty hungry, Rebekah, could I have something to eat?”

The big black woman nodded. “Just a second,” she said. Then she closed her eyes and put her palms together in prayer. Her lips moved silently and she rocked back and forth, giving thanks in an intimate talk with her Lord.

When she finished, she pulled the coverlet up over Scarlett’s shoulders and tucked it around them. Scarlett was asleep. The medicine in the milk was laudanum.


Scarlett tossed fitfully while she slept. When she thrashed off the coverlet, Rebekah tucked her in again and stroked her forehead until the lines of distress were soothed away. But Rebekah could do nothing about the dreams.

They were disjointed, chaotic, fragments of Scarlett’s memories and fears. There was hunger, the never-ending desperate hunger of the bad days at Tara. And Yankee soldiers, coming closer and closer to Atlanta, looming in the shadows of the piazza outside her window, handling her and whispering that her legs would have to come off, sprawling in a pool of blood on the floor at Tara, the blood spurting, spreading, becoming a torrent of red that rose into a mountainous wave higher and still higher over a screaming small Scarlett. And there was cold, with ice covering trees and shrivelling flowers and forming a shell around her so that she couldn’t move and couldn’t be heard although she was calling “Rhett, Rhett, Rhett come back” inside the icicles that were falling from her lips. Her mother passed through her dream, and Scarlett smelled lemon verbena, but Ellen never spoke. Gerald O’Hara jumped a fence, then another, then fence after fence into infinity, sitting backwards on a shining white stallion that was singing with Gerald in a human voice about Scarlett in a Low Back’d Car. The voices changed, became women’s voices, became hushed. She couldn’t hear what they were saying.

Scarlett licked her dry lips and opened her eyes. Why, it’s Melly. Oh, she looks so worried, poor thing. “Don’t be frightened,” Scarlett said hoarsely. “It’s all right. He’s dead. I shot him.”

“She been having a nightmare,” said Rebekah.

“The bad dreams are all over now, Scarlett. The doctor said you’re going to be well in no time at all.” Anne Hampton’s dark eyes were shining with earnestness.

Eleanor Butler’s face appeared over her shoulder. “We’ve come to take you home, my dear,” she said.


“This is ridiculous,” Scarlett complained. “I can perfectly well walk.” Rebekah clamped a hand on her shoulder and continued to push the wheelchair slowly along the crushed oyster-shell road. “I feel like a fool,” grumbled Scarlett, but she slumped back in the chair. Her head was throbbing with sharp dagger-like pains. The rainstorm had brought back weather suitable for February. The air was crisp, with a bite in the wind that was still blowing. At least Miss Eleanor brought my fur cape, she thought. I must have had a mighty close call if I’m allowed to wear the furs she thought were so showy.

“Where is Rhett? Why isn’t he taking me home?”

“I wouldn’t let him go out again,” said Mrs. Butler firmly. “I sent for our doctor and told Manigo to put Rhett straight to bed. He was blue with cold.”

Anne spoke quietly, bending near Scarlett’s ear. “Miss Eleanor was alarmed when the storm came up so suddenly. We rushed from the Home to the mooring basin and when they said the boat hadn’t come back she got frantic. I doubt that she sat down once all afternoon, she was just pacing back and forth on the piazza looking out into the rain.”

Under a nice roof, thought Scarlett impatiently. It’s all well and good, for Anne to sound so concerned for Miss Eleanor, but she wasn’t the one freezing to death!

“My son told me you worked a miracle tending his wife,” Miss Eleanor said to Rebekah. “I don’t know how we’ll ever thank you.”

“Wasn’t me, Missus, it was the good Lord. I talked to Jesus for her, poor little shivering thing. I said this ain’t Lazarus, Lord . . .”

While Rebekah repeated her story to Mrs. Butler, Anne answered Scarlett’s question about Rhett. He had waited until the doctor said that Scarlett was out of danger, then he’d taken the ferry to Charleston to set his mother’s mind at rest, knowing how worried she must be. “It gave us all a shock when we saw a Yankee soldier coming through the gate,” Anne laughed. “He’d borrowed dry clothes from the sergeant.”


Scarlett refused to leave the ferry in the wheelchair. She insisted that she was perfectly capable of walking to the house and she did walk, stepping out as if nothing had happened.

But she was tired when they arrived, so tired that she accepted Anne’s help to climb the stairs. And after a tray with a hot bean soup and corn muffins, she fell again into a deep sleep.

There were no nightmares this time. She was in the familiar soft luxury of linen sheets and feather mattress, and she knew that Rhett was only a few steps away. She slept for fourteen strength-restoring hours.


She saw the flowers the minute she woke up. Hothouse roses. There was an envelope propped against the vase. Scarlett reached greedily for it.

His bold slashing handwriting was starkly black on the creamcolored paper. Scarlett touched it lovingly before she began to read.

There is nothing that I can say about what happened yesterday except that I am profoundly ashamed and sorry to have been the cause of such great pain and danger for you.

Scarlett wriggled with pleasure.

Your courage and valiant spiris were truly heroic, and I shall always regard you with admiration and respect.

I regret bitterly all that occurred after we escaped from the long ordeal. I said things to you that no man should say to a woman, and my actions were reprehensible.

I cannot, however, deny the truth of anything I said. I must not and will not ever see you again.

According to our agreement, you have the right to remain in Charleston at my moiher’s house until April. I am frankly hoping that you will not choose to do so, because I will visit neither the city house nor Dunmore Landing until I receive infornation that you have returned to Atlanta. You cannot find me, Scarlett. Don’t try.

The cash settlement I promised will be transferted to you immediately in care of your Uncle Henry Hamilton.

I ask you to accept my sincere apologies for everything about our lives together. It was not meant to be. I wish you a happier future.

Rhett

Scarlett stared at the letter, at first too shocked to hurt. Then too angry.

Finally she held it in her two hands and tore the heavy paper slowly into shreds, talking as she destroyed the thick dark words. “Not this time you don’t, Rhett Butler. You ran away from me that time before, in Atlanta, after you made love to me. And I drooped around, lovesick, waiting for you to come back. Well, now I know a lot more than I did then. I know you can’t get me out of your head, no matter how hard you try. You can’t live without me. No man could make love to a woman the way you made love to me and then never see her again. You’ll come back, just like you came back before. But you won’t find me waiting. You’ll have to come find me. Wherever I am.”

She heard Saint Michael’s tolling the hour . . . six . . . seven . . . eight . . . nine . . . ten. Every other Sunday, she had gone to Mass at ten o’clock. Not today. She had more important things to do.

She slid out of bed and ran to the bell pull. Pansy’d better come quick. I want to be packed and at the station in time for the train to Augusta. I’ll go home, and I’ll make sure Uncle Henry’s got my money, and then I’ll start right in on the work at Tara.

. . . But I haven’t got it yet.

“Morning, Miss Scarlett. It’s mighty fine to see you looking so fit after what happen—”

“Stop that babbling and get out my valises.” Scarlett paused. “I’m going to Savannah. It’s my grandfather’s birthday.”

She’d meet her aunts at the train depot. The train left for Savannah at ten of twelve. And tomorrow she’d find the Mother Superior and make her talk to the Bishop. No point in going home to Atlanta without the deed to Tara in her hand.

“I don’t want that nasty old dress,” she said to Pansy. “Get out the ones I brought when I came here. I’ll wear what I like. I’m over being so eager to please.”


“I wondered what all the fuss was about,” said Rosemary. She eyed Scarlett’s fashionable clothes with curiosity. “Are you going someplace, too? Mama said you probably would sleep all day.”

“Where is Miss Eleanor? I want to tell her goodbye.”

“She’s already left for church. Why don’t you write her a note? Or I can give her a message.”

Scarlett looked at the clock. She hadn’t much time. The hackney was waiting outside. She dashed into the library and grabbed paper and pen. What should she say?

“Your carriage is waiting, Missus Rhett,” said Manigo.

Scarlett scrawled a few sentences, saying that she was going to her grandfather’s birthday and was sorry to miss seeing Eleanor before she left. Rhett will explain everythihg, she added. I love you.

“Miss Scarlett—” called Pansy nervously. Scarlett folded the note and sealed it.

“Please give this to your mother,” she said to Rosemary. “I must hurry. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye, Scarlett,” said Rhett’s sister. She stood in the doorway to watch Scarlett and her maid and her luggage move off down the street. Rhett hadn’t been so well organized when he departed late the night before. She had begged him not to go because he’d looked so unwell. But he had kissed her goodbye and set off into the darkness on foot. It wasn’t hard to figure out that somehow Scarlett was driving him away.