"Daddy," Beau cried, "that's Grandpa's sword!”
Ashley looked up and grinned, "Hullo, Beau. I didn't hear you. Mrs. Ravanel, welcome to Twelve Oaks." Wiping red clay onto his trousers, he rose and gestured at the sword. "I'm probing for its valve box. I never thought to become a plumber.”
When Rosemary eyed the rearing horse, Ashley said, "I bought it in Italy years and years ago. They said'ix. was Etruscan." He raised a skeptical eyebrow.
Beau freed the sword and wiped it with dead grass.
"Beau, the saber is an excellent tool for splitting kindling or finding buried water valves.”
" 'Ye shall beat your swords into plowshares?' " Rosemary suggested.
"Something like that. Here, Beau, try it on these blackberries. Keep the handle free at the base of your palm. Good." The father adjusted the son's stance.
Beau slashed a blackberry cane at the height of a man's heart.
"Excellent, Beau. My saber teacher would have approved. Mrs. Ravanel, how good of you to bring my son. Won't you come to the house? Beau, I'll carry the sword.”
Smoke wisped a second, smaller cabin. "Mose is a better Christian than I.
Won't find Mose workin' on the Lord's Day, no sir." Lithe as a boy, Ashley sprang onto his porch. "Won't you come in, Mrs. Ravanel? I can offer tea.”
"If you'll call me Rosemary.”
"Rosemary it is.”
Ashley's cabin was a one-room log hut with a stone fireplace. Its windows sparkled, and the bed was neatly made. Horticultural books lined the table. Cattails stood in a jar on the dry sink.
Ashley said, "Typba domingensis. Our red-winged blackbirds nest among them.”
Beau stirred the fire, took the wood basket, and went for firewood.
"He's a good boy," Rosemary said.
"Thankfully, Beau favors his mother." Ashley hung a kettle on the pot hook and swiveled it over the fire. "This'll only take a minute." With no special inflection, he said, "I found some letters in Melanie's desk. I didn't know my wife had a faithful correspondent. I'll return them if you wish.”
"I think ... at the time ... Melanie's letters saved my sanity. My husband Andrew ... It was ... it was all so tawdry." Rosemary clasped her arms around herself. "Those awful memories. No, I shan't want my letters; please burn them.”
Ashley stared into the fire. "I loved her so much. Melly ... is with me always." He grinned suddenly. "She approves of all this, you know — selling the sawmills, becoming a gardener.”
"Why, of course she does!”
Beau set the wood basket on the hearth. "Father, could I call on Uncle Mose and Aunt Betsy?”
"I'm sure they'd love a visit." When Beau was gone, Ashley explained, "Aunt Betsy is a prodigious baker of oatmeal cookies.”
When the kettle was hissing, Ashley filled a stained Blue Willow teapot.
"I found this half-buried beneath a garden bench. I suppose some Yankee looter set it down and forgot where. It was my mother's.”
As she measured tea, Ashley said offhandedly, "Did Scarlett tell you I tried to propose to her?”
"Why, no, Ashley. She didn't.”
Ashley's laugh was self-mockery, relief, and joy. "I'd half-persuaded myself Melanie would have wanted us married. I thank a watchful Providence and Scarlett's inherent good sense; she scorned my proposal." Ashley retrieved two mismatched cups.
"Ashley," Rosemary said softly, "why are you telling me this?”
"Because I am done with deception. I shan't conceal my true feelings ever again.”
By the first week in March, Will Benteen and Big Sam had finished plowing the river fields and moved onto the uplands. Like most countrymen, they rarely remarked the beauty about them, but each savored the expansive vista, with Tara stretching at their feet.
At noon every day, Will visited the river fields to crumble soil in his hands and test its temperature.
When the rains came, they quit and put up the horses. The wet clay soil was too heavy to plow.
"We'll fix harness until this lets up," Will said. "We're ahead of ourselves anyways.”
Rain turned the Jonesboro road into gumbo, and since they couldn't get to church that Sunday, Rosemary read psalms in the parlor, Big Sam and Dilcey adding vigorous Baptist aniens. The children recited the prayers they offered every night at their bedsides, and Scarlett shut her eyes when Ella begged God to bring Daddy Rhett home.
Lord, how she missed him. Not his wit, nor his power, nor his physicality — she missed Him!
Sometimes in her lonely bed, Scarlett startled awake, listening for her husband's breathing. She'd reach across the quilt to pat where Rhett should be.
Her skin was too sensitive, her hearing painfully acute. She flinched at sudden noises and heard visitors in the lane long before anyone else. She would stand for long minutes staring out the window at nothing at all.
"Dear God," she prayed, "please give me one more chance...”
Uncle Henry Hamilton arrived after the dinner dishes had been washed and put away. The bad road had turned the hour's ride from Jonesboro into four. Uncle Henry was wet and cold and his rented horse was knackered. He couldn't possibly return to the depot for the last train.
"Sit by the fire and we'll find you something to eat, Uncle Henry,”
Scarlett said. "Prissy, please make up the front bedroom.”
Mammy had an apple pie in the pie safe, corn bread and brown beans in the warming oven. Pork carried Uncle Henry's saddlebags upstairs.
Happy to do work he'd been trained to do, Pork laid out Uncle Henry's shaving things on the nightstand and fetched a pitcher of water.
Will came in blowing on his hands. The cold was stiffening the road, and if Uncle Henry left early tomorrow morning, he'd make a quick journey.
Mollified by a full belly and warm fire, Uncle Henry folded his napkin in precise folds. "Scarlett, if we could have a moment — privately?”
Suellen had been hoping for some Atlanta gossip and abandoned the dining room with ill grace.
Scarlett's heart sank. Oh my God, something's happened to Rhett!
Henry has some awful news about Rhett! But he was saying something about a fire. "A what?" she asked. "What fire?”
Uncle Henry gave her a strange look. "Your Atlanta home, dear Scarlett,”
he explained a second time. "I'm terribly sorry. They couldn't save it.
Captain Mulvaney arrived ten minutes after the alarm, but his men couldn't even get the furniture out.”
"My house ... burned?" Scarlett's mind raced ahead.
"I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news," Uncle Henry said. "I fear, I very much fear it will be a long time before Atlanta sees so grand a home again.”
"Gone?”
"Mulvaney's men saved the carriage house." Uncle Henry leaned forward confidentially. "Dear Scarlett, I don't wish to alarm you, but Captain Mulvaney believes ... " Uncle Henry cleared his throat.
"Believes what?”
"There'll be nothing in the papers, my dear. I saw to that!”
"Uncle Henry! What are you trying to say?”
"Scarlett, the fire was set.”
Bored housebound children were playing noisily on the front stairs.
Scarlett thought, Some child's going to fall and there'll be wailing.
Scarlett let her annoyance smother the elation she felt. "The carved staircase, the Oriental rugs, the bureaus, Rhett's books — everything gone?" Despite her intentions, the corners of Scarlett's mouth twitched upward in a smile.
Uncle Henry frowned. "I'm sorry, Scarlett, I cannot share your amusement.”
"Forgive me, Uncle Henry. But I owe so much money, and Tara sucks up every penny, and that house was fully insured.”
Uncle Henry put on his glasses, removed papers from his jacket pocket, and unfolded them as one who already knew what they contained. "You were insured with the Southern Benefit Insurance Company? Edgar Puryear's firm? Were you insured with anyone else?”