Gone With the Wind《飘》Part 17

CHAPTER XXXVII

IT WAS on a wild wet night in April that Tony Fontaine rode in from Jonesboro on a lathered horse that was half dead from exhaustion and came knocking at their door, rousing her and Frank from sleep with their hearts in their throats. Then for the second time in four months, Scarlett was made to feel acutely what Reconstruction in an its implications meant, made to understand more completely what was in Will’s mind when he said “Our troubles have just begun,” to know that the bleak words of Ashley, spo¬ken in the wind-swept orchard of Tara, were true: “This that’s facing all of us is worse than war—worse than prison—worse than death.”
The first time she had come face to face with Recon¬struction was when she teamed that Jonas Wilkerson with the aid of the Yankees could evict her from Tara. But Tony’s advent brought it all home to her in a far more terrifying manner. Tony came in the dark and the lashing rain and in a few minutes he was gone back into the night forever, but in the brief interval between he raised the curtain on a scene of new horror, a curtain that she felt hopelessly would never be lowered again.
That stormy night when the knocker hammered on the door with such hurried urgency, she stood on the landing, clutching her wrapper to her and, looking down into the hall below, had one glimpse of Tony’s swarthy saturnine face before he leaned forward and blew out the candle in Frank’s hand. She hurried down in the darkness to grasp his cold wet hand and hear him whisper: “They’re after me—going to Texas—my horse is about dead—and I’m about starved. Ashley said you’d— Don’t light the candle! Don’t wake the darkies. ... I don’t want to get you folks in trouble if I can help it.”
With the kitchen blinds drawn and all the shades pulled down to the sills, he permitted a light and he talked to Frank in swift jerky sentences as Scarlett hurried about, trying to scrape together a meal for him.
He was without a greatcoat and soaked to the skin. He was hatless and his black hair was plastered to his little skin. But the merriment of the Fontaine boys, a chilling merriment that night, was in his little dancing eyes as he gulped down the whisky she brought him. Scarlett thanked God that Aunt Pittypat was snoring undisturbed upstairs. She would certainly swoon if she saw this apparition.
“One damned bast—Scalawag less,” said Tony, holding out his glass for another drink. “I’ve ridden hard and it’ll cost me my skin if I don’t get out of here quick, but it was worth it By God, yes! I’m going to try to get to Texas and lay low there. Ashley was with me in Jonesboro and he told me to come to you all. Got to have another horse, Frank, and some money. My horse is nearly dead—all the way up here at a dead run—and like a fool I went out of the house today like a bat out of hell with¬out a coat or hat or a cent of money. Not that there’s much money in our house.”
He laughed and applied himself hungrily to the cold corn pone and cold turnip greens on which congealed grease was thick in white flakes.
“You can have my horse,” said Frank calmly. “I’ve only ten dollars with me but if you can wait till morning—”
“Hell’s afire, I can’t wait!” said Tony, emphatically but jovially. “They’re probably right behind me. I didn’t get much of a start. If it hadn’t been for Ashley dragging me out of there and making me get on my horse, I’d have stayed there like a fool and probably had my neck stretched by now. Good fellow, Ashley.”
So Ashley was mixed up in this frightening puzzle. Scar¬lett went cold, her hand at her throat. Did the Yankees have Ashley now? Why, why didn’t Frank ask what it was all about? Why did he take it all so coolly, so much as a matter of course? She struggled to get the question to her lips.
“What—” she began. “Who—”
“Your father’s old overseer—that damned—Jonas Wilkerson.”
“Did you—is he dead?”
“My God, Scarlett O’Hara!” said Tony peevishly.