And the agricultural South, waging war with the industrial North, was needing so many things now, things it had never thought of buying in times of peace.
It was a situation made to order for speculators and profiteers, and men were not lacking to take advantage of it.
As food and clothing grew scarcer and prices rose higher and higher, the public outcry against the speculators grew louder and more venomous.
In those early days of 1864, no newspaper could be opened that did not carry scathing editorials denouncing the speculators as vultures and bloodsucking leeches and calling upon the government to put them down with a hard hand.
The government did its best, but the efforts came to nothing, for the government was harried by many things.
Against no one was feeling more bitter than against Rhett Butler.
He had sold his boats when blockading grew too hazardous, and he was now openly engaged in food speculation.
The stories about him that came back to Atlanta from Richmond and Wilmington made those who had received him in other days writhe with shame.
In spite of all these trials and tribulations, Atlanta’s ten thousand population had grown to double that number during the war.
Even the blockade had added to Atlanta’s prestige.
From time immemorial, the coast cities had dominated the South, commercially and otherwise.
But now with the ports closed and many of the port cities captured or besieged, the South’s salvation depended upon itself.
The interior section was what counted, if the South was going to win the war, and Atlanta was now the center of things.
The people of the town were suffering hardship, privation, sickness and death as severely as the rest of the Confederacy; but Atlanta, the city, had gained rather than lost as a result of the war.
Atlanta, the heart of the Confederacy, was still beating full and strong, the railroads that were its arteries throbbing with the never-ending flow of men, munitions and supplies.
In other days, Scarlett would have been bitter about her shabby dresses and patched shoes but now she did not care, for the one person who mattered was not there to see her.
She was happy those two months, happier than she had been in years.
Had she not felt the start of Ashley’s heart when her arms went round his neck? seen that despairing look on his face which was more open an avowal than any words could be?
He loved her.
She was sure of that now, and this conviction was so pleasant she could even be kinder to Melanie.
She could be sorry for Melanie now, sorry with a faint contempt for her blindness, her stupidity.
“When the war is over!” she thought.
“When it’s over—then...” Sometimes she thought with a small dart of fear:
“What then?”
But she put the thought from her mind.
When the war was over, everything would be settled, somehow.
If Ashley loved her, he simply couldn’t go on living with Melanie.
But then, a divorce was unthinkable; and Ellen and Gerald, staunch Catholics that they were, would never permit her to marry a divorced man.
It would mean leaving the Church!
Scarlett thought it over and decided that, in a choice between the Church and Ashley, she would choose Ashley.
But, oh, it would make such a scandal!
Divorced people were under the ban not only of the Church but of society.
No divorced person was received.
However, she would dare even that for Ashley.
She would sacrifice anything for Ashley.
Somehow it would come out all right when the war was over.
If Ashley loved her so much, he’d find a way.
She’d make him find a way.
And with every day that passed, she became more sure in her own mind of his devotion, more certain he would arrange matters satisfactorily when the Yankees were finally beaten.
Of course, he had said the Yankees “had” them.
Scarlett thought that was just foolishness.
He had been tired and upset when he said it.
But she hardly cared whether the Yankees won or not.
The thing that mattered was for the war to finish quickly and for Ashley to come home.
Then, when the sleets of March were keeping everyone indoors, the hideous blow fell.
Melanie, her eyes shining with joy, her head ducked with embarrassed pride, told her she was going to have a baby.
“Dr. Meade says it will be here in late August or September,” she said.
“I’ve thought—but I wasn’t sure till today.
Oh, Scarlett, isn’t it wonderful?
I’ve so envied you Wade and so wanted a baby.