“Mr. Hilton has been so kind about staying with us through these difficult times,” said Mrs.
Calvert nervously, casting quick glances at her silent stepdaughter. “Very kind. I suppose you heardhow he saved our house twice when Sherman was here. I’m sure I don’t know how we would havemanaged without him, with no money and Cade—”
A flush went over Cade’s white face and Cathleen’s a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mind long lashes veiled her eyes as her mouthhardened. Scarlett knew their souls were writhing in helpless rage at being under obligations totheir Yankee overseer. Mrs. Calvert seemed ready to weep. She had somehow made a blunder. Shewas always blundering. She just couldn’t understand Southerners, for all that she had lived inGeorgia twenty years. She never knew what not to say to her stepchildren and, no matter what shesaid or did, they were always so exquisitely polite to her. Silently she vowed she would go Northto her own people, taking her children with her, and leave these puzzling stiff-necked strangers.
After these visits, Scarlett had no desire to see the Tarletons. Now that the four boys were gone,the house burned and the family cramped in the overseer’s cottage, she could not bring herself togo. But Suellen and Carreen begged and Melanie said it would be unneighborly not to call andwelcome Mr. Tarleton back from the war, so one Sunday they went.
This was the worst of all.
As they drove up by the ruins of the house, they saw Beatrice Tarleton dressed in a worn ridinghabit, a crop under her arm, sitting on the top rail of the fence about the paddock, staring moodilyat nothing. Beside her perched the bow-legged little negro who had trained her horses and he looked as glum as his mistress. Thecolts and placid brood mares,was empty now except for one mule, the mule Mr. Tarleton had ridden home from the surrender.
“I swear I don’t know what to do with myself now that my darlings are gone,” said Mrs.
Tarleton, climbing down from the fence. A stranger might have thought she spoke of her four deadsons, but the girls from Tara knew her horses were in her mind. “All my beautiful horses dead. Andoh, my poor Nellie! If I just had Nellie! And nothing but a damned mule on the place. A damnedmule,” she repeated, looking indignantly at the scrawny beast. “It’s an insult to the memory of myblooded darlings to have a mule in their paddock. Mules are misbegotten, unnatural critters and itought to be illegal to breed them.”