I’d like a special treat myself, Scarlett thought rebelliously. I’m getting mighty tired of food soft enough for Grandfather. She turned on the cook. “Get some chicken, too,” she ordered, “and fry up a couple of pieces for my dinner.”

Her bad mood cleared up long before dinner, however. When she got back to the house, there was a note from the Mother Superior. The Bishop was going to consider Scarlett’s request to allow her to buy back Carreen’s dowry.

Tara. I’m going to get Tara! So busy was her mind with planning Tara’s rebirth that she didn’t notice the time passing at all, nor was she conscious of what was on her plate at mealtime.

She could see it so clearly in her mind. The house, gleaming fresh white on top of the hill; the clipped lawn green, so green, and thick with clover; the pasture, shimmering green with its deep satiny grass bending before the breeze, unrolling like a carpet down the hill and into the mysterious shadowy dark green of the pines that bordered the river and hid it from view. Spring with clouds of tender dogwood blossoms and the heady scent of wisteria; then summer, the crisp starched white curtains billowing from the open windows, the thick sweetness of honeysuckle flowing through them into all the rooms, all restored to their dreaming, polished quiet perfection. Yes, summer was the best. The long, lazy Georgia summer when twilight lasted for hours and lightning bugs signalled in the slow thickening darkness. Then the stars, fat and close in the velvet sky, or a moon round and white, as white as the sleeping house it lit on the dark, gently rising hill.

Summer . . . Scarlett’s eyes widened. That was it! Why hadn’t she realized it before? Of course. Summer—when she loved Tara most—summer was when Rhett couldn’t go to Dunmore Landing because of the fever. It was perfect. They’d spend October to June in Charleston, with the Season to break the monotony of all those stuffy boring tea parties, and the promise of summer at Tara to break the monotony of the Season. She could bear it, she knew she could. As long as there was the long summer at Tara.

Oh, if only the Bishop would hurry!

41

Pierre Robillard escorted Scarlett to the dedication ceremonies at Hodgson Hall. He was an imposing figure in his old-fashioned dress suit, with its satin knee breeches and velvet tailcoat, the tiny red rosette of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole and a broad diagonal red sash across his chest. Scarlett had never seen anyone look quite so distinguished and aristocratic as her grandfather.

He could be proud of her, too, she thought. Her pearls and diamonds were of the first water, and her gown was magnificent, a shining column of gold brocaded silk trimmed with gold lace and a gold brocaded train that was a full four feet long. She’d never had a chance to wear it, because she’d had to dress so dowdy in Charleston. How lucky, after all, that she’d had all those clothes made before she went to Charleston. Why, there were a half dozen dresses that had hardly been on her back. Even without the trim that Rhett had taunted her into removing, they were much prettier than anything she’d seen on anybody in Savannah. Scarlett was preening as Jerome handed her up into the hired carriage to sit across from her grandfather.

The ride to the south end of town was silent. Pierre Robillard’s white-crowned head nodded, half-sleeping. It jerked upright when Scarlett exclaimed, “Oh, look!” There were crowds of people on the street outside the iron-fenced classical building, there to watch the  arrival of Savannah’s elite society. Just like the Saint Cecilia. Scarlett held her head arrogantly high as a liveried attendant helped her from the carriage to the sidewalk. She could hear murmurs of admiration from the crowds. While her grandfather slowly stepped down to join her, she bobbed her head to set her earbobs flashing in the lamplight and cast her train from over her arm to spread out behind her for her entrance up the tall, red-carpeted steps to the Hall’s door.

“Ooooh,” she heard from the crowd and, “aaah,” “beautiful,” “who is she?” As she extended her white-gloved hand to rest on her grandfather’s velvet sleeve a familiar voice called out clearly, “Katie Scarlett, darling, you’re as dazzling as the Queen of Sheba!” She looked quickly, in a panic, to her left, then, even more quickly, turned away from Jamie and his brood as if she didn’t know them, and proceeded at Pierre Robillard’s slow, stately pace to mount the stairs. But the picture was seared into her mind. Jamie had his left arm around the shoulders of his laughing, bright-haired untidy wife, his derby hat tipped carelessly on the back of his curly head. Another man stood at his right side, illuminated by the street lamp. He was only as tall as Jamie’s shoulder, and his overcoated figure was thick, stocky, a dark block. His florid round face was bright, his eyes flashing blue, and his uncovered head a halo of silver curls. He was the very image of Gerald O’Hara, Scarlett’s Pa.

Hodgson Hall had a handsome, serious interior, appropriate to its scholarly purpose. Rich, polished wood panelling covered the walls and framed the historical Society’s collection of old maps and sketches. Huge brass chandeliers fitted with white glass-globed gaslights hung from the tall ceiling. They cast an unkind, bright, bleaching light on the pale, lined aristocratic faces below them. Scarlett sought instinctively for some shadow. Old. They all look so old. She felt panicky, as if somehow she was aging rapidly, as if old age were a contagion. Her thirtieth birthday had come and gone unnoticed while she was in Charleston, but now she was acutely aware of it. Everyone knew that once a woman was thirty, she just as well be dead. Thirty was so old that she’d never believed it could happen to her. It couldn’t be true.

“Scarlett,” said her grandfather. He held her arm above the elbow and propelled her toward the receiving line. His fingers were cold as death; she could feel the cold through the thin leather of the glove that covered her arm almost to her shoulder.

Ahead of her the elderly officers of the historical Society were welcoming elderly guests, one by one. I can’t! Scarlett thought frantically. I can’t shake all those dead cold hands and smile and say I’m happy to be here. I’ve got to get away.

She sagged against her grandfather’s stiff shoulder. “I’m not well,” she said. “Grandfather, I feel ill all of a sudden.”

“You are not permitted to feel ill,” he said. “Stand straight, and do what’s expected of you. You may leave after the ceremony of dedication, not before.”

Scarlett stiffened her spine and stepped forward. What a monster her grandfather was! No wonder that she’d never heard her mother say much about him; there was nothing nice to say. “Good evening, Mrs. Hodgson,” she said. “I’m so happy to be here.”

Pierre Robillard’s progress along the lengthy receiving line was much slower than Scarlett’s. He was still bowing stiffly over the hand of a lady halfway along when Scarlett was finished. She pushed her way through a group of people and hurried to the door.

Outside, she gulped the crisp air with desperation. Then she ran. Her train glittered in the lamplight on the stairs, on the gala red carpet, stretching up behind her as if it were floating free in the air. “The Robillard carriage. Quickly!” she begged the attendant. Responding to her urgency, he ran to the corner. Scarlett ran after him, heedless of her train on the rough bricks of the sidewalk. She had to get away before anyone could stop her.

When she was safely inside the carriage, she breathed in short gasps. “Take me to South Broad,” she told the driver when she could speak. “I’ll show you which house.” Mother left these people, she thought, she married Pa. She can’t blame me if I run away, too.

She could hear the music and laughter through the door to Maureen’s kitchen. Her two fists beat on it until Jamie opened it.

“It’s Scarlett!” he said with pleased surprise. “Come in, Scarlett darling, and meet Colum. He’s here at last, the best of all the O’Haras, saving only yourself.”

Now that he was close to her, Scarlett could see that Colum was years younger than Jamie and not really all that much like her father, except for his round face and short stature among his taller cousins and nephews. Colum’s blue eyes were darker, more serious, and his round chin had a firmness that Scarlett had seen on her father’s face only when he was on horseback, commanding his mount to take a jump higher than sanity allowed.

Colum smiled when Jamie introduced them, and his eyes were almost lost in a network of creases. Yet the warmth gleaming from them made Scarlett feel that meeting her was the happiest experience of his entire life. “And are we not the luckiest family on the face of the earth, to have such a creature one of us?” he said. “It only wants a tiara to complete your gold splendor, Scarlett darling. If the Queen of the Fairies could see you, wouldn’t she tear her spangled wings to ribbons in envy? Let the little girls have a look, Maureen, it will give them something to aspire to, to grow up as breathtaking as their cousin.”

Scarlett dimpled with pleasure. “I believe I’m hearing the famous Irish blarney,” she said.

“Not a bit of it. I wish only that I had the gift of poetry to say all I’m thinking.”

Jamie hit his brother on the shoulder. “You’re not doing too badly, for all that, you rogue. Step aside and give Scarlett a seat. I’ll fetch her a glass . . . Colum found us a keg of real Irish ale on his travels, Scarlett darling. You must have a taste.” Jamie spoke name and endearment the way Colum did, as if they made one word: Scarlettdarling.