“That I will.”

The old eyes scrutinized Scarlett again. “You meant no ill, Katie Scarlett. I’ll forgive you.” She smiled suddenly, eyes first. The small pursed lips spread into a smile of heartbreaking tenderness. There was not a tooth in the rose-petal-pink gums. “I’ll order another candle for the blessing granted me of seeing you with me own eyes before I go to my grave.”

Scarlett’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you, Grandmother.”

“Not at all, not at all,” said Old Katie Scarlett. “Take her away, Colum, I’m ready for my rest now.” She closed her eyes and her chin dropped onto her warm, shawled chest.

Colum touched Scarlett’s shoulder. “We’ll go.”


Kathleen ran out through the open red door of the cottage nearby, sending the hens in the yards scattering and complaining. “Welcome to the house, Scarlett,” she cried joyfully. “Tea’s in the pot stewing, and there’s a fresh loaf of barm brack for your pleasure.”

Scarlett was amazed again at the change in Kathleen. She looked so happy. And so strong. She was wearing what Scarlett still thought of as a costume, an ankle-high brown skirt over blue and yellow petticoats. Her skirt was pulled up on one side and tucked into the top of the homespun apron that was tied around her waist, showing the bright petticoats. Scarlett owned no gown as becoming. But why, she wondered, was Kathleen bare-legged and barefooted when striped stockings would have finished off the outfit?

She had thought about asking Kathleen to come over to Molly’s to stay. Even if Kathleen made no bones about her dislike for her half sister, she should be able to put up with her for ten days, and Scarlett really needed her. Molly had a parlor maid, who acted as lady’s maid as well, but the girl was hopeless at arranging hair. But this Kathleen, happy at home and sure of herself, was not someone who’d jump to do her bidding, Scarlett could tell. There was no point in even hinting at the move, she’d just have to make do with a clumsy chignon, or wear a snood. She swallowed a sigh and went into the house.

It was so small. Bigger than Grandmother’s cottage, but still too small for a family. Where did they all sleep? The outside door led directly to the kitchen, a room twice the size of the kitchen in the small cottage but only half the size of Scarlett’s bedroom in Atlanta. The most noticeable thing in the room was the big stone fireplace in the center of the right-hand wall. Perilously steep stairs rose up to an opening high in the wall to the left of the chimney; a door to its right led to another room.

“Take a chair by the fire,” Kathleen urged. There was a low turf fire directly on the stone floor inside the chimney. The same worked stone extended outward, flooring the kitchen. It gleamed pale from scrubbing, and the smell of soap mingled with the sharp aroma of the burning peat.

My soul, Scarlett thought, my family’s really very poor. Why on earth did Kathleen cry her eyes out to come back to this? She forced a smile and sat down in the Windsor chair Kathleen had pushed forward to the hearth.

In the hours that followed Scarlett saw for herself why Kathleen had found the space and relative luxury of life in Savannah an inadequate replacement for life in the small whitewashed thatched cottage in County Meath. The O’Haras in Savannah had created a sort of island of happiness, populated by themselves, reproducing the life they’d known in Ireland. Here was the original.

A steady succession of heads and voices appeared in the open top half of the door, calling out, “God bless all here,” followed by the invitation to “come in and sit by the fire,” and then by the entrance of the owners of the voices. Women, girls, children, boys, men, babies came and went in overlapping ones, twos, threes. The musical Irish voices greeted Scarlett and welcomed her, greeted Kathleen and welcomed her home again, all with a warmth so heartfelt that Scarlett could all but hold it in her hand. It was as different from the formal world of paying and receiving calls as day differs from night. People told her they were related, and how. Men and women told her stories about her father—reminiscences from older ones, events told them by their parents or grandparents repeated by younger ones. She could see Gerald O’Hara’s face in so many of the faces around the hearth, hear his voice in their voices. It’s like Pa was here himself, she thought; I can see how he must have been when he was young, when he was here.

There was the gossip of the village and town to catch Kathleen up on, told and retold as people came and went so that before long Scarlett felt that she knew the blacksmith and the priest and the man who kept the bar and the woman whose hen was laying a double-yolk egg almost every day. When Father Danaher’s bald head appeared in the doorway, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, and when he came in she looked automatically, with everyone else, to see if his cassock had been mended yet where the rough corner on the gate to the churchyard had torn it.

It’s like the County used to be, she thought; everybody knows everybody, and knows everybody’s business. But smaller, closer, more comfortable somehow. What she was hearing and sensing, without recognizing it, was that the tiny world she was seeing was kinder than any she had ever known. She knew only that she was enjoying being in it very much.

This is the best vacation a person could possibly have. I’ll have so much to tell Rhett. Maybe we’ll come back together sometime; he’s always thought nothing of going off to Paris or London at the drop of a hat. Of course we couldn’t live like this, it’s too . . . too . . . peasanty. But it’s so quaint and charming and fun. Tomorrow I’m going to wear my Galway clothes when I come over to see everybody, and no corset at all. Shall I put on the yellow petticoat with the blue skirt, or would the red . . . ?

In the distance a bell tolled, and the young girl in the red skirt who was showing her baby’s first teeth to Kathleen jumped up from her seat on a low three-legged stool. “The Angelus! Who’d have believed I could let my Kevin come home and no dinner on the fire?”

“Take some of the stew, then, Mary Helen, we’ve got too much. Didn’t Thomas greet me when I came home with four fat rabbits he’d snared?” In less than a minute, Mary Helen was on her way with her baby on her hip and a napkin-covered bowl in her arm.

“You’ll help me pull out the table, Colum? The men will be coming to dinner. I don’t know where Bridie’s got to.”

One by one, close on the heels of the one before, the men of the cottage came in from their work in the fields. Scarlett met her father’s brother Daniel, a tall, vigorous, spare angular man of eighty, and his sons. There were four of them, aged twenty to forty-four, plus, she remembered, Matt and Gerald in Savannah. The house must have been like this when Pa was young, him and his big brothers. Colum looked so astonishingly short, even seated at table, in the midst of the big O’Hara men.

The missing Bridie ran through the door just as Kathleen was ladling stew into blue and white bowls. Bridie was wet. Her shirt clung to her arms, and her hair dripped down her back. Scarlett looked through the door, but the sun was shining.

“Did you tumble into a well, then, Bridie?” asked the youngest brother, the one named Timothy. He was glad to deflect attention away from himself. His brothers had been teasing him about his weakness for an unnamed girl they referred to only as “Golden Hair.”

“I was washing myself in the river,” Bridie said. Then she began to eat, ignoring the uproar caused by her statement. Even Colum, who rarely criticized, raised his voice and banged the table.

“Look at me and not the rabbit, Brigid O’Hara. Do you not know the Boyne claims a life for every mile of its length every year?”

The Boyne. “Is that the same Boyne as the Battle of the Boyne, Colum?” Scarlett asked. The whole table fell silent. “Pa must have told me about that a hundred times. He said the O’Haras lost all their lands because of it.” Bowls and spoons resumed their clatter.

“It is, and we did,” Colum said, “but the river continued in its course. It marks the boundary of this land. I’ll show it to you if you want to see, but not if you’re thinking of using it like a washtub. Brigid, you’ve got better sense. What possessed you?”

“Kathleen told me Cousin Scarlett was coming, and Eileen told me a lady’s maid must be washed every day before she touches the lady’s clothes or her hair. So I went to wash.” She looked full at Scarlett for the first time. “It’s my intention to please, so you’ll take me back to America with you.” Her blue eyes were solemn, her soft founded chin thrust out with determination. Scarlett liked the look of her. There’d be no homesick tears from Bridie, she was sure. But, she could only use her until the trip was over. No Southerner ever had a white maid. She looked for the right words to tell the girl.

Colum did it for her. “It was already decided you’d go to Savannah with us, Bridie, so you could have avoided risking your life . . .”

“Hoo-rah!” Bridie shouted. Then she blushed crimson. “I’ll not be so rowdy when I’m in service,” she said earnestly to Scarlett. And, to Colum, “I was only at the ford, Colum, where the water’s barely to the knee. I’m not such a fool as all that.”

“We’ll find out just what manner of fool you are, then,” Colum said. He was smiling again. “Scarlett will have the task of telling you what a lady’s needs might be, but you’ll not be after her for schooling before it’s the hour to depart. There’s two weeks and a day you’ll be sharing quarters on the ship, time enough to learn all you’re able to learn. Bide your time till then, with Kathleen and the house your better and your duty.”