Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром. Уровень 3

Four months ago! Four months ago Dalton, Resaca, Kennesaw Mountain had been to her only names of places on the railroad. Now they were battles. Peachtree Creek, Decatur, Ezra Church, Utoy Creek. Never names of places any more. Names of graves where friends lay buried, names of tangled underbrush and thick woods where bodies rotted unburied.

For a week Scarlett had not heard from Tara. Carreen was very, very sick. There was fighting at Jonesboro. No, the Yankees hadn’t gotten to Tara. The courier who brought the dispatches to General Hood assured Scarlett of that.

He had met Gerald in Jonesboro after the battle, and Gerald had begged him to bring a letter to her.

But what was Pa doing in Jonesboro? Gerald was trying to find a doctor to go to Tara with him.

Scarlett opened Gerald’s letter with fingers that trembled.

В«Dear Daughter,

Your mother and both girls have the typhoid. They are very ill but we must hope for the best. Under no condition don’t come home and expose yourself and Wade to the disease».

For the next week Scarlett crept about the house like a stricken animal, waiting for news. The mails were still disrupted, no one knew where the Confederates were or what the Yankees were doing.

Scarlett had seen enough typhoid in the Atlanta hospital to know what a week meant in that dread disease. Ellen was ill, perhaps dying, and here was Scarlett helpless in Atlanta with a pregnant woman on her hands. Ellen was ill… But Ellen can’t be ill! She had never been ill.

The very thought was incredible. Everyone else got sick, but never Ellen. Ellen looked after sick people and made them well again. She couldn’t be sick. Scarlett wanted to be home. Home!

«Oh, damn Melanie!» she thought a thousand times. «Why didn’t she go to Macon with Aunt Pitty? I’m none of her blood. And I have to wait for her baby! Oh, Mother! Mother! Don’t die! Why doesn’t this baby come? Dear God! What if Melanie is dead? Melanie dead. And Ashley… No, I mustn’t think about that, it isn’t nice.

But Ashley… No, I mustn’t think about that because he’s probably dead, anyway. What if Ashley is still alive? No, I mustn’t think about that. It’s sinful. I want to get away from here… get home… get anywhere».

Scarlett hated this ominously still town. Atlanta was no longer the place she had loved. It was a hideous place like a plaguestricken city so quiet, so dreadfully quiet after the din of the siege.