Scarlett said gratefully:“Thank you, Sugarbaby,”but looked worriedly at her younger sister. Carreen, who had always been as delicately pink and white as the orchard blossoms that are scattered by the spring wind, was no longer pink but still conveyed in her sweet thoughtful face a blossomlike quality.She had been silent, a little dazed since she came back to consciousness and found Ellen gone, Scarlett a termagant, the world changed and unceasing labor theorder of the new day.It was not in Carreen's delicate nature to adjust herself to change.She simply could not comprehend what had happened and she went about Tara like a sleepwalker, doing exactly what she was told.She looked, and was, frail but she was willing, obedient and obliging.When she was not doing Scarlett's bidding, her Rosary beads were always in her hands and her lips moving in prayers for her mother and for Brent Tarleton.It did not occur to Scarlett that Carreen had taken Brent's death so seriously and that her grief was unhealed.To Scarlett, Carreen was still“baby sister,”far too young to have had a really serious love affair.
Scarlett, standing in the sun in the cotton rows, her back breaking from the eternal bending and her hands roughened by the dry bolls, wished she had a sister who combined Suellen's energy and strength with Carreen's sweet disposition. For Carreen picked'diligently and earnestly.But, after she had labored for an hour it was obvious that she, and not Suellen, was the one not yet well enough for such work.So Scarlett sent Carreen back to the house too.
There remained with her now in the long rows only Dilcey and Prissy. Prissy picked lazily, spasmodically, complaining of her feet, her back, her internal miseries, her complete weariness, until her mother took a cotton stalk to her and whipped her until she screamed.After that she worked a little better, taking care to stay far from her mother's reach.
Dilcey worked tirelessly, silently, like a machine, and Scarlett, with her back aching and her shoulder raw from the tugging weight of the cotton bag she carried, thought that Dilcey was worth her weight in gold.
“Dilcey,”she said,“when good times come back, I'm not going to forget how you've acted. You've been mighty good.”
The bronze giantess did not grin or squirm under praise like the other negroes. She turned an immobile face to Scarlett and said with dignity:“Thankee, Ma'm.But Mist'Gerald and Miss Ellen been good to me.Mist'Gerald buy my Prissy so I wouldn't grieve and I doan forgit it.I is part Indian and Indians doan forgit them as is good to them.I is sorry'bout my Prissy.She mighty wuthless.Look lak she all nigger lak her pa.Her pa was mighty flighty.”
In spite of Scarlett’s problem of getting help from the others in the picking and in spite of the weariness in doing the labor herself, her spirits lifted as the cotton slowly made its way from the fields to the cabins. There was something about cotton that was reassuring, steadying.Tara had risen to riches on cotton, even as the whole South had risen, and Scarlett was Southerner enough to believe that both Tara and the South would rise again out of the red fields.
Of course, this little cotton she had gathered was not much but it was something. It would bring a little in Confederate money and that little would help her to save the hoarded greenbacks and gold in the Yankee's wallet until they had to be spent.Next spring she would try to make the Confederate government send back Big Sam and the other field hands they had commandeered, and if the government wouldn't release them, she'd use the Yankee's money to hire field hands from the neighbors.Next spring, she would plant and plant She straightened her tired back and, looking over the browning autumn fields, she saw next year's crop standing sturdy and green, acre upon acre.
Next spring!Perhaps by next spring the war would be over and good times would be back. And whether the Confederacy won or lost, times would be better.Anything was better than the constant danger of raids from both armies.When the war was over, a plantation could earn an honest living.Oh, if the war were only over!Then people could plant crops with some certainty of reaping them!
There was hope now. The war couldn't last forever.She had her little cotton, she had food, she had a horse, she had her small but treasured hoard of money.Yes, the worst was over!
Chapter 27
On a noonday in mid-November, they all sat grouped about the dinnertable, eating the last of the dessert concocted by Mammy from corn meal and dried huckleberries, sweetened with sorghum. There was a chill in the air, the first chill of the year, and Pork, standing behind Scarlett's chair, rubbed his hands together in glee and questioned:“Ain'it‘bout time fer de hawg killin',Miss Scarlett?”
“You can taste those chitlins already, can't you?”said Scarlett with a grin.“Well, I can taste fresh pork myself and if the weather holds for a few days more, we'll—”
Melanie interrupted, her spoon at her lips,“Listen, dear!Somebody's coming!”
“Somebody hollerin’,”said Pork uneasily.
On the crisp autumn air came clear the sound of horse's hooves, thudding as swiftly as a frightened heart, and a woman's voice, high pitched, screaming:“Scarlett!Scarlett!”
Eye met eye for a dreadful second around the table before chairs were pushed back and everyone leaped up. Despite the fear that made it shrill, they recognized the voice of Sally Fontaine who, only an hour before, had stopped at Tara for a brief chat on her way to Jonesboro.Now, as they all rushed pell-mell to crowd the front door, they saw her coming up the drive like the wind on a lathered horse, her hair streaming behind her, her bonnet dangling by its ribbons.She did not draw rein but as she galloped madly toward them, she waved her arm back in the direction from which she had come.
“The Yankees are coming!I saw them!Down the road!The Yankees—”