Gone with the Wind

As they slowly made their way through the mudholes of the town’s chief street, she noted with interest all the new buildings and the new faces. The sidewalks were crowded with men in uniform, bearing the insignia of all ranks and all service branches; the narrow street was jammed with vehicles-carriages, buggies, ambulances, covered army wagons with profane drivers swearing as the mules struggled through the ruts; gray-clad couriers dashed spattering through the streets from one headquarters to another, bearing orders and telegraphic dispatches; convalescents limped about on crutches, usually with a solicitous lady at either elbow; bugle and drum and barked orders sounded from the drill fields where the recruits were being turned into soldiers; and with her heart in her throat, Scarlett had her first sight of Yankee uniforms, as Uncle Peter pointed with his whip to a detachment of dejected-looking bluecoats being shepherded toward the depot by a squad of Confederates with fixed bayonets, to entrain for the prison camp.

“Oh,” thought Scarlett, with the first feeling of real pleasure she had experienced since the day of the barbecue, “I’m going to like it here! It’s so alive and exciting!”

The town was even more alive than she realized, for there were new barrooms by the dozens; prostitutes, following the army, swarmed the town and bawdy houses were blossoming with women to the consternation of the church people. Every hotel, boarding house and private residence was crammed with visitors who had come to be near wounded relatives in the big Atlanta hospitals. There were parties and balls and bazaars every week and war weddings without number, with the grooms on furlough in bright gray and gold braid and the brides in blockade-run finery, aisles of crossed swords, toasts drunk in blockaded champagne and tearful farewells. Nightly the dark tree-lined streets resounded with dancing feet, and from parlors tinkled pianos where soprano voices blended with those of soldier guests in the pleasing melancholy of “The Bugles Sang Truce” and “Your Letter Came, but Came Too Late”-plaintive ballads that brought exciting tears to soft eyes which had never known the tears of real grief.

As they progressed down the street, through the sucking mud, Scarlett bubbled over with questions and Peter answered them, pointing here and there with his whip, proud to display his knowledge.

“Dat air de arsenal. Yas’m, dey keeps guns an’ sech lak dar. No’m, dem air ain’ sto’s, dey’s blockade awfisses. Law, Miss Scarlett, doan you know whut blockade awfisses is? Dey’s awfisses whar furriners stays dat buy us Confedruts’ cotton an’ ship it outer Cha’ston and Wilmin’ton an’ ship us back gunpowder. No’m, Ah ain’ sho whut kine of furriners dey is. Miss Pitty, she say dey is Inlish but kain nobody unnerstan a’ wud dey says. Yas’m ’tis pow’ful smoky an’ de soot jes’ ruinin’ Miss Pitty’s silk cuttins. It’ frum de foun’ry an’ de rollin’ mills. An’ de noise dey meks at night! Kain nobody sleep. No’m, Ah kain stop fer you ter look around. Ah done promise Miss Pitty Ah bring you straight home… Miss Scarlett, mek yo’ cu’tsy. Dar’s Miss Merriwether an’ Miss Elsing a-bowin’ to you.”

Scarlett vaguely remembered two ladies of those names who came from Atlanta to Tara to attend her wedding and she remembered that they were Miss Pittypat’s best friends. So she turned quickly where Uncle Peter pointed and bowed. The two were sitting in a carriage outside a drygoods store. The proprietor and two clerks stood on the sidewalk with armfuls of bolts of cotton cloth they had been displaying. Mrs. Merriwether was a tall, stout woman and so tightly corseted that her bust jutted forward like the prow of a ship. Her iron-gray hair was eked out by a curled false fringe that was proudly brown and disdained to match the rest of her hair. She had a round, highly colored face in which was combined good-natured shrewdness and the habit of command. Mrs. Elsing was younger, a thin frail woman, who had been a beauty, and about her there still clung a faded freshness, a dainty imperious air.