A sleeping child under the settee woke at the sounds of the dancing feet and began to cry. Like a contagion, crying spread to the other smallest children. The dancing and the music stopped.

“Make some mattresses from folded blankets in the other parlor,” Maureen said placidly, “and give them dry bottoms. Then we’ll close the doors most shut and they’ll sleep right along. Jamie, the bone-woman has a terrible thirst. Mary Kate, hand your Pa my glass.”

Patricia asked Billy to carry their three-year-old son. “I’ll get Betty,” she said, reaching beneath the settee. “Hush, hush.” She cradled the crying child to her. “Helen, close the curtains in the back, darling. There’ll be a strong moon tonight.”

Scarlett was still half in a trance from the spell of the music. She looked vaguely at the windows and was jolted back to reality. It was getting dark. The cup of tea she’d come for had stretched into hours. “Oh, Maureen, I’m going to be late for supper,” she gasped. “I’ve got to go home. My grandfather will be furious.”

“Let him be, the old loo-la. Stay for the party. It’s only beginning.”

“I wish I could,” said Scarlett fervently. “It’s the best party I’ve ever been to in my life. But I promised I’d be back.”

“Ah, well, then. A promise is a promise. You’ll come again?”

“I’d love to. Will you invite me?”

Maureen laughed comfortably. “Will you listen to the girl?” she said to the room at large. “There’s no inviting done here. We’re all a family, and you’re a part of it. Come anytime you like. My kitchen door has no lock, and there’s always a fire on the hearth. Jamie’s a fine hand with the fiddle himself, too . . . Jamie! Scarlett’s got to go. Put your coat on, man, and give her your arm.”


Just before they turned the corner Scarlett heard the music begin again. It was faint because of the thick brick walls of the house and the windows closed against the winter night. But she recognized what the O’Haras were singing. It was “The Wearing o’ the Green.”

I know all the words to that one; oh, I wish I hadn’t had to leave.

Her feet made little dance steps. Jamie laughed and matched her. “I’ll teach you the reel next time,” he promised.

36

Scarlett bore her aunts’ tight-lipped disapproval with easy disregard. Even being called on the carpet by her grandfather failed to upset her. She remembered Maureen O’Hara’s off-handed dismissal of him. Old loo-la, she thought, and giggled internally. It made her brave and impertinent enough to sashay over to his bed and kiss his cheek after he dismissed her. “Good night, Grandfather,” she said cheerfully.

“Old loo-la,” she whispered when she was safely in the hall. She was laughing when she joined her aunts at table. Her supper was brought promptly. The plate was covered with a brightly shining silver dish cover to keep the food hot. Scarlett was sure it was newly polished. This house could run really properly, she thought, if it just had someone to keep the servants in line. Grandfather lets them get away with murder. Old loo-la.

“What do you find so amusing, Scarlett?” Pauline’s tone was Icy.

“Nothing, Aunt Pauline.” Scarlett looked down at the mountain of food revealed when Jerome ceremoniously lifted the silver cover. She laughed aloud. For once in her life she wasn’t hungry, not after the feast at the O’Haras’. And there was enough food in front of her to feed a half dozen people. She must have put the fear of God into the kitchen.


The following morning at Ash Wednesday Mass Scarlett took her place beside Eulalie in the pew favored by the aunts. It was genteelly unobtrusive, entered from a side aisle and located well towards the back. Her knees had just begun to hurt from kneeling on the cold floor when she saw her cousins enter the church. They walked—of course, thought Scarlett—straight up the center aisle to almost the front, where they took up two full pews. What very large people they are, and so full of life. And color. Jamie’s sons’ heads look like warm fires in the light from the red stained glass, and not even their hats can hide the bright hair on Maureen and the girls. Scarlett was so engrossed in admiration and memories of the birthday party that she almost missed the arrival of the nuns from the convent. After she’d hurried her aunts to get to church early, too. She wanted to make sure that the Mother Superior from Charleston was still at hand in Savannah.

Yes, there she was. Scarlett ignored Eulalie’s frantic whispers ordering her to turn back around and face the altar. She studied the nun’s serene expression as she walked past. Today the Mother Superior would see her. Scarlett was determined. She spent her time during Mass daydreaming about the party she’d give after she restored Tara to all its former beauty. There’d be music and dancing, just like last night, and it would go on and on for days and days.

“Scarlett!” Eulalie his sed. “Stop humming like that.”

Scarlett smiled into her missal. She hadn’t realized she was humming. She had to admit that “Peg in a Low Back’d Car” wasn’t exactly church music.


“I don’t believe it!” Scarlett said. Her pale eyes were bewildered and hurt beneath her smudged forehead, and her fingers were closed like claws on the rosary she’d borrowed from Eulalie.

The elderly nun repeated her message with emotion-free patience. “The Mother Superior will be in retreat all day, in prayer and fasting.” She took pity on Scarlett and added an explanation. “This is Ash Wednesday.”

“I know it’s Ash Wednesday,” Scarlett almost shouted. Then she curbed her tongue. “Please say that I am very disappointed,” she said softly, “and I’ll come back tomorrow.”

As soon as she reached the Robillard house she washed her face.

Eulalie and Pauline were visibly shocked when she came downstairs and joined them in the drawing room, but neither of them said anything. Silence was the only weapon they felt it safe to use when Scarlett was in a temper. But when she announced that she was going to order breakfast, Pauline spoke up. “You’ll regret that before the day is out, Scarlett.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Scarlett answered. Her jaw was set.

It sagged when Pauline explained. Scarlett’s reintroduction to religion was so recent that she thought fasting meant simply having fish on Fridays instead of meat. She liked fish and had never objected to the rule. But what Pauline told her was objectionable in the extreme.

Only one meal a day during the forty days of Lent, and no meat at that meal. Sundays were the exception. Still no meat, but three meals were allowed.

“I don’t believe it!” Scarlett exclaimed for the second time within an hour. “We never did that at home.”

“You were children,” said Pauline, “but I’m sure your mother fasted as she should. I cannot understand why she didn’t introduce you to Lenten observance when you passed childhood, but then she was isolated out in the country without a priest’s guidance, and there was Mr. O’Hara’s influence to offset . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Scarlett’s eyes lit for battle. “And just what do you mean by ‘Mr. O’Hara’s influence,’ I’d like to know?”

Pauline dropped her gaze. “Everyone knows that the Irish take certain freedoms with the laws of the Church. You can’t really blame them, poor illiterate nation that they are.” She crossed herself piously.

Scarlett stamped her foot. “I’m not going to stand here and listen to such high and mighty French snobbery. My Pa was never anything but a good man, and his ‘influence’ was kindness and generosity, something you don’t know anything about. Furthermore, I’ll have you know, I spent all afternoon yesterday with his kin, and they’re fine people, every one of them. I’d a sight rather be influenced by them than by your whey-faced religious prissiness.”

Eulalie burst into tears. Scarlett scowled at her. Now she’ll sniff that sniff of hers for hours, I reckon. I can’t bear it.

Pauline sobbed loudly. Scarlett turned, staring. Pauline never wept.

Scarlett looked helplessly at the two bent gray heads and hunched shoulders, Pauline’s so thin and fragile looking.

My grief! She walked over to Pauline and touched her aunt’s knobby back. “I’m sorry, Auntie. I didn’t mean what I said.”


When peace had been restored, Eulalie suggested that Scarlett join her and Pauline for their walk around the square. “Sister and I always find that a constitutional is a great restorative,” she said brightly. Then her mouth quivered pathetically. “It keeps one’s mind off food, too.”

Scarlett agreed at once. She had to get out of the house. She was convinced she could smell bacon frying in the kitchen. She walked with her aunts around the square of green in front of the house, then the short distance to the next square, around it, then to the next square, and the next and the next. By the time they returned to the house she was dragging her feet almost as much as Eulalie was, and she was positive that she’d walked through or around every single one of the twenty-some squares that dotted Savannah and gave it its claim to unique charm. She was also positive that she was half-starved to death and bored to screaming-point. But at least it was time for dinner . . . She couldn’t remember ever tasting fish that was quite so delicious.

What a relief! Scarlett thought when Eulalie and Pauline went upstairs for their after-dinner naps. A little of their reminiscences of Savannah goes a long way. A lot of it could drive a person to murder. She wandered restlessly through the big house picking up bits of china and silver from tables and putting them back without really seeing them.