There had been fighting in Tennessee for three years and people were accustomed to the thought of that state as a far-away battle field, almost as far away as Virginia or the Mississippi River.
Moreover, Old Joe and his men were between the Yankees and Atlanta, and everyone knew that, next to General Lee himself, there was no greater general than Johnston, now that Stonewall Jackson was dead.
Dr. Meade summed up the civilian point of view on the matter, one warm May evening on the veranda of Aunt Pitty’s house, when he said that Atlanta had nothing to fear, for General Johnston was standing in the mountains like an iron rampart.
His audience heard him with varying emotions, for all who sat there rocking quietly in the fading twilight, watching the first fireflies of the season moving magically through the dusk, had weighty matters on their minds.
Mrs. Meade, her hand upon Phil’s arm, was hoping the doctor was right.
If the war came closer, she knew that Phil would have to go.
He was sixteen now and in the Home Guard.
Fanny Elsing, pale and hollow eyed since Gettysburg, was trying to keep her mind from the torturing picture which had worn a groove in her tired mind these past several months—Lieutenant Dallas McLure dying in a jolting ox cart in the rain on the long, terrible retreat into Maryland.
Captain Carey Ashburn’s useless arm was hurting him again and moreover he was depressed by the thought that his courtship of Scarlett was at a standstill.
That had been the situation ever since the news of Ashley Wilkes’ capture, though the connection between the two events did not occur to him.
Scarlett and Melanie both were thinking of Ashley, as they always did when urgent tasks or the necessity of carrying on a conversation did not divert them.
Scarlett was thinking bitterly, sorrowfully: He must be dead or else we would have heard.
Melanie, stemming the tide of fear again and again, through endless hours, was telling herself:
“He can’t be dead.
I’d know it—I’d feel it if he were dead.”
Rhett Butler lounged in the shadows, his long legs in their elegant boots crossed negligently, his dark face an unreadable blank.
In his arms Wade slept contentedly, a cleanly picked wishbone in his small hand.
Scarlett always permitted Wade to sit up late when Rhett called because the shy child was fond of him, and Rhett oddly enough seemed to be fond of Wade.
Generally Scarlett was annoyed by the child’s presence, but he always behaved nicely in Rhett’s arms.
As for Aunt Pitty, she was nervously trying to stifle a belch, for the rooster they had had for supper was a tough old bird.
That morning Aunt Pitty had reached the regretful decision that she had better kill the patriarch before he died of old age and pining for his harem which had long since been eaten.
For days he had drooped about the empty chicken run, too dispirited to crow.
After Uncle Peter had wrung his neck, Aunt Pitty had been beset by conscience at the thought of enjoying him, en famille, when so many of her friends had not tasted chicken for weeks, so she suggested company for dinner.
Melanie, who was now in her fifth month, had not been out in public or received guests for weeks, and she was appalled at the idea.
But Aunt Pitty, for once, was firm.
It would be selfish to eat the rooster alone, and if Melanie would only move her top hoop a little higher no one would notice anything and she was so flat in the bust anyway.
“Oh, but Auntie I don’t want to see people when Ashley—”
“It isn’t as if Ashley were—had passed away,” said Aunt Pitty, her voice quavering, for in her heart she was certain Ashley was dead.
“He’s just as much alive as you are and it will do you good to have company.
And I’m going to ask Fanny Elsing, too.
Mrs. Elsing begged me to try to do something to arouse her and make her see people—”
“Oh, but Auntie, it’s cruel to force her when poor Dallas has only been dead—”
“Now, Melly, I shall cry with vexation if you argue with me.
I guess I’m your auntie and I know what’s what.
And I want a party.”
So Aunt Pitty had her party, and, at the last minute, a guest she did not expect, or desire, arrived.
Just when the smell of roast rooster was filling the house, Rhett Butler, back from one of his mysterious trips, knocked at the door, with a large box of bonbons packed in paper lace under his arm and a mouthful of two-edged compliments for her. There was nothing to do but invite him to stay, although Aunt Pitty knew how the doctor and Mrs. Meade felt about him and how bitter Fanny was against any man not in uniform.
Neither the Meades nor the Elsings would have spoken to him on the street, but in a friend’s home they would, of course, have to be polite to him.
Besides, he was now more firmly than ever under the protection of the fragile Melanie.
After he had intervened for her to get the news about Ashley, she had announced publicly that her home was open to him as long as he lived and no matter what other people might say about him.
Aunt Pitty’s apprehensions quieted when she saw that Rhett was on his best behavior.
He devoted himself to Fanny with such sympathetic deference she even smiled at him, and the meal went well.
It was a princely feast.
Carey Ashburn had brought a little tea, which he had found in the tobacco pouch of a captured Yankee en route to Andersonville, and everyone had a cup, faintly flavored with tobacco.
There was a nibble of the tough old bird for each, an adequate amount of dressing made of corn meal and seasoned with onions, a bowl of dried peas, and plenty of rice and gravy, the latter somewhat watery, for there was no flour with which to thicken it.
For dessert, there was a sweet potato pie followed by Rhett’s bonbons, and when Rhett produced real Havana cigars for the gentlemen to enjoy over their glass of blackberry wine, everyone agreed it was indeed a Lucullan banquet.
When the gentlemen joined the ladies on the front porch, the talk turned to war.
Talk always turned to war now, all conversations on any topic led from war or back to war—sometimes sad, often gay, but always war. War romances, war weddings, deaths in hospitals and on the field, incidents of camp and battle and march, gallantry, cowardice, humor, sadness, deprivation and hope.
Always, always hope.
Hope firm, unshaken despite the defeats of the summer before.