Hang on with all your might!”
Ella shrieked, "I want my mother!”
"I'm here, honey. Keep crawling." Scarlett hacked a painful cough.
Ahead in the smoke, a darker rectangle became the stairwell. With her free hand, Scarlett groped for the top stair, crying, "I'm at the stairs. I'm starting down." She coughed until it felt as if she were coughing up lung tissue. Clinging to Wade's sweat-slippery hand, Scarlett backed down — two, three steps. Cool air rushed up the stairs, lifting the smoke above her.
Feeling with toes for each invisible riser, Scarlett backed down the narrow pitch-black stairs.
Far behind, Rhett shouted, "Hands tight! Hold tight!" When Wade misstepped, his hand was snatched from hers and she blocked his body so he wouldn't tumble down. Wade said, "Sorry, Mother," sounding just like Charles Hamilton.
In the tiny vestibule outside the kitchen, Scarlett tried to remember whether the latch was on the left or right. Somewhere above, Rhett cried, "We are nearly there! Louis Valentine! Pirates never snivel!”
The narrow door swung open on Mammy in nightdress and calico nightcap. The old negress said helplessly, "Scarlett, honey. We is on fire.”
Scarlett pulled Wade into the cool kitchen.
"Yes, Mammy, we're on fire. Ring the farm bell and rouse everybody.”
Scarlett handed Louis Valentine into the kitchen, then Rosemary and Ella, then Beau, and finally Rhett Butler, who was tucking his scorched hands into his armpits.
"But it was such a fine barbecue," a dazed Mammy said. "We ain't had such a time in years!”
Scarlett cried, "Oh Rhett! Your hands, your poor, poor hands!”
"Left my gloves in Glasgow," he replied lightly.
Rosemary shepherded the children into the yard as Mammy's bell clamored the alarm. The steading was dark and quiet. When Ella collapsed, Rhett caught and carried her. Ella's chubby bare feet dangled from his arms. Rhett laid Ella in some grass beside the springhouse and said, "Poor child. She was as brave as she needed to be.”
"I'll stay with Ella," Rosemary said. "Wade Hamilton, please heed the younger boys.”
Taz leaned a ladder against Gerald O'Hara's balcony, where his unflustered mother was waiting. Flames flickered behind Tara's upstairs windows.
Ellen O'Hara's fanlight and side lights glowed white. An empty fuel can lay next to the front door. Scarlett could smell kerosene in the wood smoke.
Tara's front stairs, where the orchestra had played Strauss waltzes just hours before, were burning.
Rhett braced the ladder as Taz climbed.
Grass beside the house was scorched. The boxwoods were burned sticks.
As if ghosts were sitting in it, Tara's porch swing creaked back and forth.
Her pink dressing gown as intact as her dignity, Belle Watling backed down the ladder rung by cautious rung.
Negroes ran to the house. Dilcey shouted, "Tara! We got to save Tara!”
Scarlett woke from her stupor. "Rhett!" she cried. "My God! It's Tara.”
She darted for the door as the fanlight popped and flame blossomed on the underside of the porch roof.
Rhett caught her around the waist and lifted her off her feet. "No!" he said. "It's too far gone." She kicked at his shins. "Not Tara. I won't lose Tara.”
"By God! I won't lose you! Not ever again!" Rhett bore Scarlett away as flames burst through the soffits and over the roof peak.
The heat was blistering. Rhett, Scarlett, Tazewell, and Belle retreated to the turnaround.
Scarlett wept angrily. "We should have tried!" She flailed at Rhett's chest. "We should have done something?' The fire roared and Tara's windows glowed like Satan's eyes. Hoofbeats in the lane: the neighbors. Too late. Altogether too late.
"Oh Rhett," Scarlett moaned, "it's Tara. It's Tara." She buried her face in his shoulder.
"Yes, honey. It was.”
The voice wasn't as loud as the fire. "My day is come.”
The ragged old man had twigs in his beard. His greasy hair was knotted into tangles. He'd got too near the fire and his shirtfront and sleeves were scorched here and there. He held a rusty single-shot dueling pistol.
"Rhett Butler," Isaiah Watling repeated dully, "my day is come.”
Rhett pushed Scarlett aside. "Good evening, Watling. You didn't need to burn my wife's house. I'd have come out if you'd asked.”
"Cleansing fire ..." Isaiah mumbled.
"I don't recall needing a cleansing fire," Rhett said. "But I'm not particularly religious. Doubtless, you know a good deal more about cleansing fires than I do.”
The old man found a residue of energy and straightened. "You murdered my son, Shadrach. Because of Rhett Butler, the Young Master of Broughton Plantation, my boy burns in hell.”
Through chattering teeth, Scarlett yelled, "You! Leave Tara! Depart from us, you miserable creature!”
Rhett said, "Isaiah, if I hadn't killed your son, somebody else would have. You know that. Shad Watling wasn't going to die in bed.”
"Nor will you, sinner!" With trembling hands, old Isaiah raised his pistol.
Rhett took a step toward him. "Give me the pistol, Isaiah.”
Belle ran to her father, crying, "Poppa! Poppa! Please! You mustn't!”
The report wasn't loud: a crack, not much louder than a stick breaking.
Belle Watling shuddered. Tucking her pink dressing gown neatly so no one could see her bare legs, Belle sat down on the mounting block.
Belle said, "Poor, poor Poppa," and died.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Tomorrow Is Another Day
After years of wondering about the place, Mrs. Meade and Mrs. Elsing visited the Chapeau Rouge. It was their patriotic duty.
Nine years after the War, the Confederate story had flowered into a flamboyant, romantic myth. Certain lurid events that had once embarrassed these ladies had become prominent in their family legends. As Mrs. Elsing told her grandchildren, "When Georgia's Yankee occupiers were hanging brave men right and left, Belle Watling's ruse saved your father from the gallows. You simply cannot imagine!" Mrs. Elsing's astonishment at Yankee gullibility was renewed every time she repeated the familiar tale. "The Yankees actually believed Hugh Elsing would brawl in a sporting house! Imagine that!”
But a legend is one thing, a sporting house another, and when the ladies' coach stopped before the notorious place, the ladies almost told their coachman to drive on. They were greatly relieved to see others they knew, respectable citizens come to pay their respects to Atlanta's most notorious fallen woman.
Tell the truth, they were disappointed. Afterward, Mrs. Meade told her friends, "Why, Miss Watling's parlor seemed very nearly respectable!”
Mrs. Elsing, who detested French decor, disagreed. "Too ar-tis-tic, my dear. Far too ar-tis-tic.”
The Chapeau Rouge hadn't changed since the days when Confederate officers rollicked there and veterans returned to honor the young men they had been. In uneasy association, reputable and disreputable Atlantans waited on a walk bordered by Belle's fragrant roses.
MacBeth greeted those he knew and those he didn't with the same impersonal "Mornin', sir, mornin', ma'am. Glad you could come out on such a sorrowful day.”
Inside, curiosity seekers who expected gay cockatiels and exotic flamingos found wrens: Belle's black-clad Cyprians.
Several presently respectable matrons had worked here during the War.
Mrs. Gerald D. had been the vivacious "Miss Susanna" and "L'il Flirt" was now Mrs. William P. By neither word nor gesture did the Cyprians recognize their former comrades.
The mortician's men had delivered fifty straight-backed chairs and shifted Belle's parlor furniture upstairs. They'd set the coffin on sawhorses and draped the bier in black crepe. They'd placed scores of wreaths and floral arrangements to best advantage.