Isn't the worst part about this. It's the loss of the men, the

young men." She thought again of the four Tarletons and Joe

Fontaine, of Raiford Calvert and the Munroe brothers and all the

boys from Fayetteville and Jonesboro whose names she had read on

the casualty lists. "If there were just enough men left, we could

manage somehow but--"

Another thought struck her--suppose she wanted to marry again. Of

course, she didn't want to marry again. Once was certainly enough.

Besides, the only man she'd ever wanted was Ashley and he was

married if he was still living. But suppose she would want to

marry. Who would there be to marry her? The thought was

appalling.

"Melly," she said, "what's going to happen to Southern girls?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. What's going to happen to them? There's no one

to marry them. Why, Melly, with all the boys dead, there'll be

thousands of girls all over the South who'll die old maids."

"And never have any children," added Melanie, to whom this was the

most important thing.

Evidently the thought was not new to Suellen who sat in the back of

the wagon, for she suddenly began to cry. She had not heard from

Frank Kennedy since Christmas. She did not know if the lack of

mail service was the cause, or if he had merely trifled with her

affections and then forgotten her. Or maybe he had been killed in

the last days of the war! The latter would have been infinitely

preferable to his forgetting her, for at least there was some

dignity about a dead love, such as Carreen and India Wilkes had,

but none about a deserted fiancee.

"Oh, in the name of God, hush!" said Scarlett.

"Oh, you can talk," sobbed Suellen, "because you've been married

and had a baby and everybody knows some man wanted you. But look

at me! And you've got to be mean and throw it up to me that I'm an

old maid when I can't help myself. I think you're hateful."

"Oh, hush! You know how I hate people who bawl all the time. You

know perfectly well old Ginger Whiskers isn't dead and that he'll

come back and marry you. He hasn't any better sense. But

personally, I'd rather be an old maid than marry him."

There was silence from the back of the wagon for a while and

Carreen comforted her sister with absent-minded pats, for her mind

was a long way off, riding paths three years old with Brent

Tarleton beside her. There was a glow, an exaltation in her eyes.

"Ah," said Melanie, sadly, "what will the South be like without all

our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived?

We could use their courage and their energy and their brains.

Scarlett, all of us with little boys must raise them to take the

places of the men who are gone, to be brave men like them."

"There will never again be men like them," said Carreen softly.

"No one can take their places."

They drove home the rest of the way in silence,

One day not long after this, Cathleen Calvert rode up to Tara at

sunset. Her sidesaddle was strapped on as sorry a mule as Scarlett

had ever seen, a flop-eared lame brute, and Cathleen was almost as

sorry looking as the animal she rode. Her dress was of faded

gingham of the type once worn only by house servants, and her

sunbonnet was secured under her chin by a piece of twine. She rode

up to the front porch but did not dismount, and Scarlett and

Melanie, who had been watching the sunset, went down the steps to

meet her. Cathleen was as white as Cade had been the day Scarlett

called, white and hard and brittle, as if her face would shatter if

she spoke. But her back was erect and her head was high as she

nodded to them.

Scarlett suddenly remembered the day of the Wilkes barbecue when

she and Cathleen had whispered together about Rhett Butler. How

pretty and fresh Cathleen had been that day in a swirl of blue

organdie with fragrant roses at her sash and little black velvet

slippers laced about her small ankles. And now there was not a

trace of that girl in the stiff figure sitting on the mule.

"I won't get down, thank you," she said. "I just came to tell you

that I'm going to be married."

"What!"

"Who to?"

"Cathy, how grand!"

"When?"

"Tomorrow," said Cathleen quietly and there was something in her

voice which took the eager smiles from their faces. "I came to

tell you that I'm going to be married tomorrow, in Jonesboro--and

I'm not inviting you all to come."

They digested this in silence, looking up at her, puzzled. Then

Melanie spoke.

"Is it someone we know, dear?"

"Yes," said Cathleen, shortly. "It's Mr. Hilton."

"Mr. Hilton?"

"Yes, Mr. Hilton, our overseer."

Scarlett could not even find voice to say "Oh!" but Cathleen,

peering down suddenly at Melanie, said in a low savage voice: "If

you cry, Melly, I can't stand it. I shall die!"

Melanie said nothing but patted the foot in its awkward home-made

shoe which hung from the stirrup. Her head was low.

"And don't pat me! I can't stand that either."

Melanie dropped her hand but still did not look up.

"Well, I must go. I only came to tell you." The white brittle

mask was back again and she picked up the reins.

"How is Cade?" asked Scarlett, utterly at a loss but fumbling for

some words to break the awkward silence.

"He is dying," said Cathleen shortly. There seemed to be no

feeling in her voice. "And he is going to die in some comfort and

peace if I can manage it, without worry about who will take care of

me when he's gone. You see, my stepmother and the children are

going North for good, tomorrow. Well, I must be going."

Melanie looked up and met Cathleen's hard eyes. There were bright

tears on Melanie's lashes and understanding in her eyes, and before

them, Cathleen's lips curved into the crooked smile of a brave

child who tries not to cry. It was all very bewildering to

Scarlett who was still trying to grasp the idea that Cathleen

Calvert was going to marry an overseer--Cathleen, daughter of a

rich planter, Cathleen who, next to Scarlett, had had more beaux

than any girl in the County.

Cathleen bent down and Melanie tiptoed. They kissed. Then

Cathleen flapped the bridle reins sharply and the old mule moved

off.

Melanie looked after her, the tears streaming down her face.

Scarlett stared, still dazed.

"Melly, is she crazy? You know she can't be in love with him."

"In love? Oh, Scarlett, don't even suggest such a horrid thing!

Oh, poor Cathleen! Poor Cade!"

"Fiddle-dee-dee!" cried Scarlett, beginning to be irritated. It

was annoying that Melanie always seemed to grasp more of situations

than she herself did. Cathleen's plight seemed to her more

startling than catastrophic. Of course it was no pleasant thought,

marrying Yankee white trash, but after all a girl couldn't live

alone on a plantation; she had to have a husband to help her run

it.

"Melly, it's like I said the other day. There isn't anybody for

girls to marry and they've got to marry someone."

"Oh, they don't have to marry! There's nothing shameful in being a

spinster. Look at Aunt Pitty. Oh, I'd rather see Cathleen dead!

I know Cade would rather see her dead. It's the end of the

Calverts. Just think what her--what their children will be. Oh,

Scarlett, have Pork saddle the horse quickly and you ride after her

and tell her to come live with us!"

"Good Lord!" cried Scarlett, shocked at the matter-of-fact way in

which Melanie was offering Tara. Scarlett certainly had no

intention of feeding another mouth. She started to say this but

something in Melanie's stricken face halted the words.

"She wouldn't come, Melly," she amended. "You know she wouldn't.

She's so proud and she'd think it was charity."

"That's true, that's true!" said Melanie distractedly, watching the

small cloud of red dust disappear down the road.

"You've been with me for months," thought Scarlett grimly, looking

at her sister-in-law, "and it's never occurred to you that it's

charity you're living on. And I guess it never will. You're one

of those people the war didn't change and you go right on thinking

and acting just like nothing had happened--like we were still rich

as Croesus and had more food than we know what to do with and

guests didn't matter. I guess I've got you on my neck for the rest

of my life. But I won't have Cathleen too."

CHAPTER XXX

In that warm summer after peace came, Tara suddenly lost its

isolation. And for months thereafter a stream of scarecrows,

bearded, ragged, footsore and always hungry, toiled up the red hill

to Tara and came to rest on the shady front steps, wanting food and

a night's lodging. They were Confederate soldiers walking home.

The railroad had carried the remains of Johnston's army from North

Carolina to Atlanta and dumped them there, and from Atlanta they

began their pilgrimages afoot. When the wave of Johnston's men had

passed, the weary veterans from the Army of Virginia arrived and

then men from the Western troops, beating their way south toward

homes which might not exist and families which might be scattered

or dead. Most of them were walking, a few fortunate ones rode bony

horses and mules which the terms of the surrender had permitted

them to keep, gaunt animals which even an untrained eye could tell

would never reach far-away Florida and south Georgia.

Going home! Going home! That was the only thought in the

soldiers' minds. Some were sad and silent, others gay and

contemptuous of hardships, but the thought that it was all over and

they were going home was the one thing that sustained them. Few of

them were bitter. They left bitterness to their women and their

old people. They had fought a good fight, had been licked and were

willing to settle down peaceably to plowing beneath the flag they

had fought.

Going home! Going home! They could talk of nothing else, neither

battles nor wounds, nor imprisonment nor the future. Later, they

would refight battles and tell children and grandchildren of pranks

and forays and charges, of hunger, forced marches and wounds, but

not now. Some of them lacked an arm or a leg or an eye, many had

scars which would ache in rainy weather if they lived for seventy

years but these seemed small matters now. Later it would be

different.

Old and young, talkative and taciturn, rich planter and sallow

Cracker, they all had two things in common, lice and dysentery.

The Confederate soldier was so accustomed to his verminous state he

did not give it a thought and scratched unconcernedly even in the

presence of ladies. As for dysentery--the "bloody flux" as the

ladies delicately called it--it seemed to have spared no one from

private to general. Four years of half-starvation, four years of

rations which were coarse or green or half-putrefied, had done its

work with them and every soldier who stopped at Tara was either

just recovering or was actively suffering from it.

"Dey ain' a soun' set of bowels in de whole Confedrut ahmy,"

observed Mammy darkly as she sweated over the fire, brewing a

bitter concoction of blackberry roots which had been Ellen's

sovereign remedy for such afflictions. "It's mah notion dat

'twarn't de Yankees whut beat our gempmum. 'Twuz dey own innards.

Kain no gempmum fight wid his bowels tuhnin' ter water."

One and all, Mammy dosed them, never waiting to ask foolish

questions about the state of their organs and, one and all, they

drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remembering, perhaps,

other stern black faces in far-off places and other inexorable

black hands holding medicine spoons.